OUR PrTMS Story
What is PrTMS? Get ready…this is a mouth-full: personalized repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation. We’ll go in depth into different non-medication treatment options in another blog, but for now I’d like to introduce you to how we found this treatment option.
[I have permission from the patient to share this story without identification.] Three and a half years ago, after I had been in practice for a dozen years, I was treating a patient with bipolar disorder. She is a stay-at-home mom of two kiddos on the autism spectrum. To say her life was stressful was a huge understatement. We were having difficulty finding a good medication combo to stabilize her moods, but she was far more focused on her kids. Every month during our visits she brought up new treatment possibilities for them: acupuncture, acupressure, chiropractic, nutrition, you name it. One day she came to me asking, “have you heard of PrTMS?” I said no, but I was familiar with standard TMS…she said she’d heard of this new treatment where the TMS was personalized to the individual and had showed some promise in brain trauma and even autism spectrum folks. “So I’m planning to move my family to Indiana for the next 6 weeks for treatment to see how it goes…” Ummm…ok? Good luck? God bless? I didn’t really know how to respond. I just knew that my patient was more than dedicated to getting her kids the help that they needed.
Two months later she shows up in my office with her husband, all smiles. She’s off half of the meds I’d been prescribing her and yet her mood and sleep were improved. Her husband, who was a footballer in high school and college, likely with several concussions, no longer had headache or sleep problems. Her kiddo who was completely uncoordinated could now ride a bike. Her other kiddo, who was barely verbal, now talks non-stop. Then they showed me pictures of their EEGs. I’d only had vague recollections from medical school of neurologists using this tool mainly to diagnose seizures or brain death. While I knew nothing about reading them at the time, just seeing the difference between the treatment start to finish…they looked “cleaner and tighter.” I’m thinking, ok, who the heck is this guy?!?!? So I did some research myself…
Dr. Kevin Murphy of San Diego is a pediatric radiation oncologist by trade (translated, he zaps kiddos’ brain tumors), with a background in waveform physics and engineering, because some people are just underachievers, I guess! :) He was finding with all the new treatments emerging, kids were living longer with cancers that were previously considered “death sentence diagnoses.” Great, right? Not so much. Their quality of life was horrendous. They acted depressed: lethargic, had brain fog, difficulty making decisions, no energy, no joy….yet they weren’t responding to standard antidepressant treatment. He wanted to find a way to make the treatment specific to the patients’ needs. That’s what most chemo drugs do, right? They target specific types of tumors.
He saw a fantastic opportunity in TMS, or transcranial magnetic stimulation…but at the time, TMS was a “one size fits all” type of treatment. TMS was a “kinder, gentler” version of electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, where magnetic pulses were delivered to the brain over the course of several weeks…but treatment was only given at one brain location for fear of inducing seizures. Standard TMS treatment was also only given at one frequency, at one amplitude, with one specific treatment protocol. But what if patients’ brains’ needs didn’t “fit” within those specific parameters?
Dr. Murphy looked for a way to figure out at what “frequency” or speed patients’ brains were functioning with different diagnoses. So he began tweaking the EEG process so it could be performed and read clinicians more easily. This would be a way to individualize treatment for specific individuals with very different problems. Pairing the EEG read with the TMS machine, you could essentially “dial in” the treatment specific to the individual and their needs!
Tom Felton, Co-founder of MTV stated: “Innovation is taking two things that exist and putting them together in a new way.” And this is exactly what Dr. Murphy has done.
He tried PrTMS out on patients who had undergone chemo and radiation therapy for brain tumors for “chemobrain” or the appearance of depression after these treatments. The patients responded beautifully and at a rate of nearly 3X the efficacy of standard TMS! Standard TMS has a success rate very similar to oral antidepressant medications: about 30% of the time. PrTMS is closer to 90%.
When I reached out to Dr. Murphy, they flew their treatment team out to us and gave a presentation on the treatment and demonstrated their wireless EEG cap. When he showed me the videos of the before and after of a family member, who struggled with autism spectrum disorder, I was speechless, in tears. He was almost non-verbal, no social interaction, had multiple outbursts a day, and couldn’t maintain eye contact. After 6 months of twice daily treatment, he “woke up.” Made eye contact with his parents. Could socially interact. I thought, this is a man on a mission. I have to get involved in this treatment! The ramifications for being able to treat mood disorders and traumatic brain injuries…it was off the charts. For the brain to be mapped out in such a way, it was opening new horizons for treatment. The brain could now be seen as a living changing organ as it responds to treatment and we could see it documented on the EEG! The brain was no longer a “black box!”
In the past 6 years, we’ve now given PrTMS to hundreds of patients with a variety of illnesses: OCD, depression, anxiety, PTSD, concussion, post-stroke, post-chemotherapy treatment, migraines, ADHD, brain fog associated with COVID long-haulers, and mild autism. So far, we’ve had greatly improved outcomes! Nearly 88% symptomatic remission of PTSD, 70-80% symptomatic remission of depression and anxiety (similar to outcomes for ketamine but longer-lasting) 60% improvement of concussive symptoms, and 50% improvement in perimenopausal and postmenopausal psychiatric complications! Compare that to standard oral medication treatment AND standard TMS, both of which have about a 30-40% success rate. That number by itself is depressing!
As of this blog, Dr. Murphy has done several THOUSAND EEGs in California, and has affiliates in 24 states offering this state-of-the-art treatment. We work closely with him as he onboards physicians and clinics to this new treatment, and have had him as a guest on one of our Psych Waves podcast. If you’d like to learn more, please give us a call!
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