Florida woman first to have robotic brain surgery for Parkinson's

ORLANDO, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35 ORLANDO) -

Medicine controlled Clarita Beslack's tremors from Parkinson's Disease for five years. Then something changed and by January 2013, she knew she needed a different kind of treatment.

Beslack says, "I couldn't travel any longer. I started stumbling and I needed something to help me walk. They couldn't give me anymore medication. So I probably would've ended up in a wheel chair."

She turned to Dr. Nizam Razack at Florida Hospital Celebration and he proposed a traditional approach with a new, unusual twist. Razack wanted to use Deep Brain Stimulation, or DBS, to treat Beslack's Parkinson's symptoms.

DBS is done by placing an electrode deep inside a patient's brain. Stimulation sent to it controls the tremors. But the surgery is tricky, and precise place of the electrode is critical. Dr. Razack suggested using something called the Mazor Robotics Renaissance Guidance System.

FOX 35's Tom Johnson has more on what happened when they tried it and how the robot works.

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Florida woman first to have robotic brain surgery for Parkinson's