CHINA: ’HOLE IN HEAD’ SURGERY FOR ADDICTS

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CHINA RESUMES 'HOLE IN HEAD' SURGERY FOR ADDICTS


BEIJING -- China has resumed controversial brain surgery intended to cure drug users of their addiction, less than two years after it was suspended.


It claims that the "hole in the head" operations are now being performed as part of a controlled experiment.


More than 500 of the operations, in which parts of a patient's brain are destroyed using a heated needle, were performed across China between 2000 and the end of last year -- when the health ministry, faced with growing criticism, said their outcome was too uncertain for them to continue.


Side effects included loss of memory, weakened sex drive and extreme mood swings. Critics complained that there had been no proper scientific research into the treatment. The health ministry said the operations would remain suspended until a proper medical evaluation was completed.


Now the leading expert in the field, who has overseen 262 of the operations, has been permitted to resume them.


Dr. Gao Guodong, head of the medical research centre at Xian Tang Du Hospital in the central city of Xian, said his was the sole hospital allowed to start operating again.


Chinese drug addicts and their desperate families had been willing to pay thousands of dollars for the treatment -- pioneered but then banned in Russia -- in the belief that it would cure them.


Patients who have stopped taking drugs for at least 15 days are given local anesthetic in the top of the head before Gao drills a half-inch hole in the top of their skull.


A thin surgical needle is slowly inserted deep into the brain, where it is heated to a temperature of up to 80 degrees C and kept inside for seven days by use of a surgical clamp applied around the head. The needle is removed, destroying -- if all has gone to plan -- that part of the brain linked to addictions and cravings.


The resumption of the operation has been criticized by some of Gao's medical colleagues. Li Yongjie, director of neurosurgery in Xuanwu Hospital in Beijing, gave warning last week that destroying one part of the brain would inevitably cause unpredictable side effects.


"If you turn down the brightness level on a TV set all the channels will go darker," he said. "Just like if you cut off the dependence on drugs in the brain, there is also a strong chance you are cutting off other things, like some control of emotions and sexual desire."