Selected Podcast
Eastside Neuroscience Institute - Expanding Care to Patients Living with Parkinson’s Disease
Dr. Ryder Gwinn, a neurosurgeon at Eastside Neuroscience Institute, and Dr. Daniel Burdick, a Eastside Neuroscience Institute, join us to discuss the Eastside Neuroscience Institute and how it will further assist in the care of patients with Parkinson's Disease.
Featuring:
Learn more about Daniel Burdick, MD
Ryder Gwinn, MD, a Physician Eastside Neuroscience Institute, tries to combine technology with traditional Neurosurgical techniques to find the least invasive therapy with the highest chance of success for patients suffering from disorders of the spine and central nervous system.
Learn more about Ryder Gwinn, MD
Daniel Burdick, MD | Ryder Gwinn, MD
A Neurosurgeon at Eastside Neuroscience Institute. My approach is one of shared decision-making. I'm expert at understanding the symptoms of movement disorders and at knowing what effects different treatments may have, but only you know your goals. Once I understand your goals, I can make suggestions that help you achieve them.Learn more about Daniel Burdick, MD
Ryder Gwinn, MD, a Physician Eastside Neuroscience Institute, tries to combine technology with traditional Neurosurgical techniques to find the least invasive therapy with the highest chance of success for patients suffering from disorders of the spine and central nervous system.
Learn more about Ryder Gwinn, MD
Transcription:
Scott Webb (Host): Hello, and welcome to Check-Up Chat with EvergreenHealth. I'm Scott Webb. And today, I'm joined by Dr. Ryder Gwinn. He's a surgeon at EvergreenHealth Neurosurgery. And I'm also joined by Dr. Daniel Burdick. He's a physician at EvergreenHealth's Booth Gardner Parkinson's Care Center. And they're here to tell us about the Eastside Neuroscience institute and how Parkinson's care families can benefit from this service.
It's great to have you both on today. Dr. Gwinn, can you give us a brief background to what the Eastside Neuroscience Institute Parkinson's disease center is and how it expands patient care in our community?
Dr. Ryder Gwinn: Sure. Yeah. This is really a partnership between the Overlake Hospital and the Evergreen Hospital in order to kind of consolidate the neurosciences and capitalize on all of the good parts of each of the two independent institutions so that we can grow one neuroscience center on the east side that can really deliver all of the specialty care that's necessary in the neurosciences with all the technology and all the multidisciplinary approaches that we have in order to help our patients as well as we can.
Scott Webb: Yeah. And you can see how everybody, but especially patients would benefit. I love the way you said that, sort of we'll just keep the good parts, right? We'll take these things. We'll put them together and we'll keep the good parts and patients will benefit, you know, tremendously from that. And Dr. Burdick, maybe, you know, framed this way, when we think about this joint venture, how is this going to help to expand Parkinson's care to the community?
Dr. Daniel Burdick: I think the benefit of bringing together these two hospitals, EvergreenHealth and Overlake, is it gives us a larger support for some of these specialty procedures. That's really the biggest advantage. We're building on the reputation, and not just reputation, but actual accomplishments of the Booth Gardner Parkinson Center at EvergreenHealth, and bringing that to the broader east side community, expanding beyond just the kind of northeast quadrant and bringing it into the Bellevue area and south from there as well. So I think that expanding our care area will bring Parkinson's care to a greater number of people.
Scott Webb: Yeah. And again, that could only benefit patients, of course. And sticking with you, Dr. Burdick, the Eastside Neuroscience Institute Parkinson's Disease Center is made up of a comprehensive care team. Tell us what patients can expect from that initial appointment with a physician.
Dr. Daniel Burdick: Yeah, as I said before, we're kind of building on the history of the Booth Gardner Parkinson's Center and expanding that out. And the Booth Gardner Parkinson's Center was founded over 20 years ago, really with the goal of bringing a comprehensive care approach to Parkinson's disease in the Pacific Northwest. And what that means is that we look very carefully at what other team members we can use to help support the person with Parkinson's disease.
So when you're coming in for an appointment with a physician, we're having an assessment, of course, to see what medication changes might be needed, what medical interventions might be needed, but also what other team members should we bring in to help support the patient and not just the patient, but also the patient's family. So, for instance, in the building with us, we have physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists. We have neuropsychologists to help support the cognitive and psychological aspects of the disease. And so we're looking for all of those issues that might be best served by one of our team members. Functionally, what that means is the initial appointment will probably seem like an appointment with most other physicians, but a comprehensive assessment, including like questionnaires that you'll fill out before the appointment can help us identify which service would be best suited for the care.
Scott Webb: Dr. Gwinn, once it's determined that surgery is needed, what can patients expect from that visit?
Dr. Ryder Gwinn: It's likely that they would actually have an educational visit before they see me as a neurosurgeon. The decision to even go to surgery may have taken many visits with the movement disorder neurologist, the neuropsychologist. But once the whole team decides, yes, this is something that can potentially help this patient, they typically would come in to see one of our nurse practitioners who does a lot of the programming of these devices and has models that they can show the patient. And basically, they'll try to educate them on the entire process as much as possible. We talk about different types of interventions that are available. We talk about the different companies that make these devices. We talk to the patients about which targets in the brain we might select in order to interact with, to try to help their symptoms. And all of that is gone over with this nurse practitioner before the patient ever meets me. And a lot of this is because it's a lot of information. It's very hard to take in all of this at one setting, and really repetition and having lots of opportunities to ask and answer questions is very important.
So that session may last an hour or two, and then they'll see me after that. And we'll once again go over what their symptoms are, what their problems in their life are from a kind of day to day basis. Are they having problems with certain tasks that we can help with? And then we talk about the deep brain simulation, for example, what this can do to alleviate the symptoms of the Parkinson's and sometimes what it's not going to alleviate and try to set really good expectations about what this intervention is really going to give them in their lives.
And once we're kind of all on the same page that way, and they feel comfortable, then I'll again go through the technology, I'll go through the day of surgery, what to expect when they come in, the exact technique of what we actually do in the surgery. Sometimes patients are actually awake for the surgery, sometimes they're not awake for the surgery. So we really want to educate them on what that day is going to be like for them. And then again, I go over all of the potential benefits and all of the potential risks of the intervention, and then just answer a lot of questions.
And as Dr. Burdick was saying, a lot of times it's not just the patient, but it's the patient's family that really needs to understand and agree. And they're the ones that are going to be helping the patient after surgery to make it through that recovery period. And oftentimes, patients will have to come in a number of times to help get this stimulator, which we implant, working well for them. So they'll actually come back in for programming sessions one, two, sometimes three times afterwards in order to get it optimally working.
Scott Webb: Dr. Burdick, research is such an influential part to advancing medicine and especially perhaps when it comes to Parkinson's. Can you just tell us more about that, the importance of research?
Dr. Daniel Burdick: That's a big part of what we do here, actually. We're not just trying to treat patients with the medication s or surgeries that we have available now, but to find better treatments that would potentially slow down disease progression, for instance, which is a big unmet need. And the patients can play a really important role in that because really, without our patients volunteering for these studies, we're not going to be able to develop new treatments and to find better answers.
That's a significant part of what we do. In fact, we've been doing clinical trials at the Booth Gardner Center, and we'll expand that into the Eastside Neuroscience Institute. We've been doing trials now for over 20 years. And we've done over 50 trials in movement disorders, that includes Parkinson's. Over the last eight years, we've done about 50 or more and in fact had over a thousand patients enrolled in those trials in that time. So, it's a big, important part of what we do and we welcome participation from our patients.
Scott Webb: Yeah, one of the things I've learned, doctor, in hosting these, whether it's cancer trials or Parkinson's trials, is there's a big element to this of paying it forward. Do you find that with Parkinson's patients and their families? You know, they're trying to help themselves obviously, but they're also really trying to pay it forward to others.
Dr. Daniel Burdick: Absolutely. There's a big interest in that, I think. We live in an area with a lot of interest in science, technology and research. And there's a good understanding, I think, from many of our patients that this is how progress is made, that donations of time and energy are just as important as donations of money. And we can all work together to advance Parkinson's treatment that way.
Scott Webb: That's really well said. This has been so educational for me today. Thank you both for your time. Dr. Gwinn, I'm going to let you wrap up here, tell us again about the joint venture and why you think this is so important for Parkinson's patients.
Dr. Ryder Gwinn: The Eastside Neuroscience Institute is the product of that joint venture between the two different hospitals. And as Dr. Burdick has said, the Booth Gardner Parkinson's Center has been at Evergreen Hospital for many, many years, but has not necessarily had the resources and the access to patients that is the best for really getting the word out and really taking care of the most number of patients. And so one of the great things that this joint venture has allowed is the pooling of resources between the two hospitals. And for example, when I put in a deep brain stimulation device, I'd like to use the latest technology to be as precise as possible to be able to do that. And one of the things that those joint resources have enabled us to do is to buy a robot that is much more accurate and much more reliable than the previous frames that I've used over the last 20 years. And that results in an easier surgery for the patient. I don't have to shave hair the way I had to in the past by using a robot like this. And it's a reproducible product every time we do this with the patient.
And another investment that has been made is using what we call intraoperative imaging. So in the past, we would place these electrodes in the brain and then we'd have to leave the operating room and get imaging on them afterwards and find out whether it's in the right spot or not. Now, we have access to an imaging system in the operating room where we can put the electrode into place. We can test it and then we can get an imaging sequence that then tells us exactly where it is, so did it end up exactly where we wanted it to? And none of that would be possible without having a larger set of resources within this institute to be able to do that.
Scott Webb: It's really amazing. Just bringing a big smile to my face, you know, to have science and technology and medicine and, pooling resources and helping patients and their families. Really amazing work. Thank you both. You both stay well.
Dr. Ryder Gwinn: Thank you very much.
Dr. Daniel Burdick: Thank you for. It's been a pleasure.
Scott Webb (Host): The Eastside Neuroscience Institute helps improve the quality of life for people living with Parkinson's disease and related conditions through a comprehensive program of diagnosis, treatment, and support. To learn more, visit eastsideneuroinstitute.org.
Please remember to subscribe, rate and review this podcast and all the other EvergreenHealth podcasts. For more health tips and updates, follow us on your social channels.
Scott Webb (Host): Hello, and welcome to Check-Up Chat with EvergreenHealth. I'm Scott Webb. And today, I'm joined by Dr. Ryder Gwinn. He's a surgeon at EvergreenHealth Neurosurgery. And I'm also joined by Dr. Daniel Burdick. He's a physician at EvergreenHealth's Booth Gardner Parkinson's Care Center. And they're here to tell us about the Eastside Neuroscience institute and how Parkinson's care families can benefit from this service.
It's great to have you both on today. Dr. Gwinn, can you give us a brief background to what the Eastside Neuroscience Institute Parkinson's disease center is and how it expands patient care in our community?
Dr. Ryder Gwinn: Sure. Yeah. This is really a partnership between the Overlake Hospital and the Evergreen Hospital in order to kind of consolidate the neurosciences and capitalize on all of the good parts of each of the two independent institutions so that we can grow one neuroscience center on the east side that can really deliver all of the specialty care that's necessary in the neurosciences with all the technology and all the multidisciplinary approaches that we have in order to help our patients as well as we can.
Scott Webb: Yeah. And you can see how everybody, but especially patients would benefit. I love the way you said that, sort of we'll just keep the good parts, right? We'll take these things. We'll put them together and we'll keep the good parts and patients will benefit, you know, tremendously from that. And Dr. Burdick, maybe, you know, framed this way, when we think about this joint venture, how is this going to help to expand Parkinson's care to the community?
Dr. Daniel Burdick: I think the benefit of bringing together these two hospitals, EvergreenHealth and Overlake, is it gives us a larger support for some of these specialty procedures. That's really the biggest advantage. We're building on the reputation, and not just reputation, but actual accomplishments of the Booth Gardner Parkinson Center at EvergreenHealth, and bringing that to the broader east side community, expanding beyond just the kind of northeast quadrant and bringing it into the Bellevue area and south from there as well. So I think that expanding our care area will bring Parkinson's care to a greater number of people.
Scott Webb: Yeah. And again, that could only benefit patients, of course. And sticking with you, Dr. Burdick, the Eastside Neuroscience Institute Parkinson's Disease Center is made up of a comprehensive care team. Tell us what patients can expect from that initial appointment with a physician.
Dr. Daniel Burdick: Yeah, as I said before, we're kind of building on the history of the Booth Gardner Parkinson's Center and expanding that out. And the Booth Gardner Parkinson's Center was founded over 20 years ago, really with the goal of bringing a comprehensive care approach to Parkinson's disease in the Pacific Northwest. And what that means is that we look very carefully at what other team members we can use to help support the person with Parkinson's disease.
So when you're coming in for an appointment with a physician, we're having an assessment, of course, to see what medication changes might be needed, what medical interventions might be needed, but also what other team members should we bring in to help support the patient and not just the patient, but also the patient's family. So, for instance, in the building with us, we have physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists. We have neuropsychologists to help support the cognitive and psychological aspects of the disease. And so we're looking for all of those issues that might be best served by one of our team members. Functionally, what that means is the initial appointment will probably seem like an appointment with most other physicians, but a comprehensive assessment, including like questionnaires that you'll fill out before the appointment can help us identify which service would be best suited for the care.
Scott Webb: Dr. Gwinn, once it's determined that surgery is needed, what can patients expect from that visit?
Dr. Ryder Gwinn: It's likely that they would actually have an educational visit before they see me as a neurosurgeon. The decision to even go to surgery may have taken many visits with the movement disorder neurologist, the neuropsychologist. But once the whole team decides, yes, this is something that can potentially help this patient, they typically would come in to see one of our nurse practitioners who does a lot of the programming of these devices and has models that they can show the patient. And basically, they'll try to educate them on the entire process as much as possible. We talk about different types of interventions that are available. We talk about the different companies that make these devices. We talk to the patients about which targets in the brain we might select in order to interact with, to try to help their symptoms. And all of that is gone over with this nurse practitioner before the patient ever meets me. And a lot of this is because it's a lot of information. It's very hard to take in all of this at one setting, and really repetition and having lots of opportunities to ask and answer questions is very important.
So that session may last an hour or two, and then they'll see me after that. And we'll once again go over what their symptoms are, what their problems in their life are from a kind of day to day basis. Are they having problems with certain tasks that we can help with? And then we talk about the deep brain simulation, for example, what this can do to alleviate the symptoms of the Parkinson's and sometimes what it's not going to alleviate and try to set really good expectations about what this intervention is really going to give them in their lives.
And once we're kind of all on the same page that way, and they feel comfortable, then I'll again go through the technology, I'll go through the day of surgery, what to expect when they come in, the exact technique of what we actually do in the surgery. Sometimes patients are actually awake for the surgery, sometimes they're not awake for the surgery. So we really want to educate them on what that day is going to be like for them. And then again, I go over all of the potential benefits and all of the potential risks of the intervention, and then just answer a lot of questions.
And as Dr. Burdick was saying, a lot of times it's not just the patient, but it's the patient's family that really needs to understand and agree. And they're the ones that are going to be helping the patient after surgery to make it through that recovery period. And oftentimes, patients will have to come in a number of times to help get this stimulator, which we implant, working well for them. So they'll actually come back in for programming sessions one, two, sometimes three times afterwards in order to get it optimally working.
Scott Webb: Dr. Burdick, research is such an influential part to advancing medicine and especially perhaps when it comes to Parkinson's. Can you just tell us more about that, the importance of research?
Dr. Daniel Burdick: That's a big part of what we do here, actually. We're not just trying to treat patients with the medication s or surgeries that we have available now, but to find better treatments that would potentially slow down disease progression, for instance, which is a big unmet need. And the patients can play a really important role in that because really, without our patients volunteering for these studies, we're not going to be able to develop new treatments and to find better answers.
That's a significant part of what we do. In fact, we've been doing clinical trials at the Booth Gardner Center, and we'll expand that into the Eastside Neuroscience Institute. We've been doing trials now for over 20 years. And we've done over 50 trials in movement disorders, that includes Parkinson's. Over the last eight years, we've done about 50 or more and in fact had over a thousand patients enrolled in those trials in that time. So, it's a big, important part of what we do and we welcome participation from our patients.
Scott Webb: Yeah, one of the things I've learned, doctor, in hosting these, whether it's cancer trials or Parkinson's trials, is there's a big element to this of paying it forward. Do you find that with Parkinson's patients and their families? You know, they're trying to help themselves obviously, but they're also really trying to pay it forward to others.
Dr. Daniel Burdick: Absolutely. There's a big interest in that, I think. We live in an area with a lot of interest in science, technology and research. And there's a good understanding, I think, from many of our patients that this is how progress is made, that donations of time and energy are just as important as donations of money. And we can all work together to advance Parkinson's treatment that way.
Scott Webb: That's really well said. This has been so educational for me today. Thank you both for your time. Dr. Gwinn, I'm going to let you wrap up here, tell us again about the joint venture and why you think this is so important for Parkinson's patients.
Dr. Ryder Gwinn: The Eastside Neuroscience Institute is the product of that joint venture between the two different hospitals. And as Dr. Burdick has said, the Booth Gardner Parkinson's Center has been at Evergreen Hospital for many, many years, but has not necessarily had the resources and the access to patients that is the best for really getting the word out and really taking care of the most number of patients. And so one of the great things that this joint venture has allowed is the pooling of resources between the two hospitals. And for example, when I put in a deep brain stimulation device, I'd like to use the latest technology to be as precise as possible to be able to do that. And one of the things that those joint resources have enabled us to do is to buy a robot that is much more accurate and much more reliable than the previous frames that I've used over the last 20 years. And that results in an easier surgery for the patient. I don't have to shave hair the way I had to in the past by using a robot like this. And it's a reproducible product every time we do this with the patient.
And another investment that has been made is using what we call intraoperative imaging. So in the past, we would place these electrodes in the brain and then we'd have to leave the operating room and get imaging on them afterwards and find out whether it's in the right spot or not. Now, we have access to an imaging system in the operating room where we can put the electrode into place. We can test it and then we can get an imaging sequence that then tells us exactly where it is, so did it end up exactly where we wanted it to? And none of that would be possible without having a larger set of resources within this institute to be able to do that.
Scott Webb: It's really amazing. Just bringing a big smile to my face, you know, to have science and technology and medicine and, pooling resources and helping patients and their families. Really amazing work. Thank you both. You both stay well.
Dr. Ryder Gwinn: Thank you very much.
Dr. Daniel Burdick: Thank you for. It's been a pleasure.
Scott Webb (Host): The Eastside Neuroscience Institute helps improve the quality of life for people living with Parkinson's disease and related conditions through a comprehensive program of diagnosis, treatment, and support. To learn more, visit eastsideneuroinstitute.org.
Please remember to subscribe, rate and review this podcast and all the other EvergreenHealth podcasts. For more health tips and updates, follow us on your social channels.