How is essential tremor treated, and is there a cure?

How is essential tremor treated, and is there a cure?

There’s no cure for essential tremor, but there are ways to treat it. The main treatment options are medications, assistive devices, botulinum toxin, deep brain stimulation and focused ultrasound. Your healthcare provider may recommend deep brain stimulation or focused ultrasound if other treatments aren’t enough to help your tremors.

• Medication: The most common medications, taken either on their own or in combination, to treat essential tremor are beta-blockers like propranolol and anti-seizure drugs like primidone.
• Adaptive devices: Many devices have been developed to improve tremor control, such as weighted items, tremor-canceling devices, vibration devices and peripheral nerve stimulation.
• Botulinum toxin: This involves injection into the tremoring muscles to temporarily weaken the muscles and lessen tremor severity.
• Deep brain stimulation: This is a surgery to implant a device that delivers electrical impulses to a specific part of your brain. The electrical impulses interrupt the signals that cause essential tremor muscle movements. This can improve tremors on both sides of your body.
• Focused ultrasound: This procedure uses ultra-high-frequency sound waves focused onto a single point in your brain involved in the production of tremor, destroying the targeted tissue. This destruction can greatly reduce the severity of the tremor and improve hand steadiness. This can improve tremors on only one side of your body.

Complications/side effects of treatments

The possible complications and side effects of treatments for essential tremor depend on many factors, including the treatments themselves. Your healthcare provider is the best person to tell you what side effects or complications are possible in your specific situation, and what you can do to manage or avoid them.