KMGH-TV (Denver) | Medical breakthrough: UCHealth patient first in the US to receive groundbreaking Parkinson's treatment

A medical breakthrough right here in Colorado — a UCHealth patient became the first in the nation to use groundbreaking technology to treat advanced Parkinson’s disease, a disease impacting an estimated 1 million people nationwide. “I used to run every day. Lift weights,” recalled Kate Goes In Center, the patient at the heart of this breakthrough research. The 74-year-old got the diagnosis in 2019 after searching for answers with no luck. “They kept telling me, 'Oh you don’t have Parkinson’s' – and then I visited Anschutz and their team said, 'Oh, yeah, Parkinson’s. It’s that fast,” she said. That's where she met doctors Drew Kern and John Thompson — who, over the past several years, have been working with researchers across the globe to develop groundbreaking new technology called adaptive deep brain stimulation. It expands on already existing technology which surgically places electrodes into specific regions of the brain.