A woman with advanced Parkinson's disease stepped off the treatment table with a smoother gait.
A man in the same program picked up a knife and fork and ate a meal on his own.
Both improvements came in the same session, in what their doctors describe as the first dual-target focused ultrasound procedures for Parkinson's in the Rocky Mountain region.
The two patients were treated at the Advanced Therapies in Movement Disorders Program at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, which reported the cases on September 15, 2026.
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In one 90-minute clinic visit, doctors treated two areas of the brain at the same time.
They aimed to fix severe shaking on one side of the body, as well as muscle stiffness and slow movement.
What the two patients experienced
The female patient saw a 60 to 70 percent drop in her rest tremor after the first target was treated.
After the second target, she had no tremor at all and about 70 percent less stiffness. She began walking with a more fluid gait.
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The male patient, who also has dementia, ended the procedure with no tremor, no rigidity and very little slowness of movement.
He was able to eat with utensils for the first time in a long while.
His wife told the team it was the best night of sleep the couple had had in years, because his tremor was gone.
How dual-target focused ultrasound works
High-intensity focused ultrasound, or HIFU, is an incisionless treatment.
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Doctors use MRI guidance to focus sound waves through the skull onto a tiny spot deep in the brain, heating that spot until the target tissue is destroyed.
The Focused Ultrasound Foundation describes the technique as noninvasive, with no incisions, no implanted hardware and rapid recovery.
That is a key difference from deep brain stimulation, which requires surgery to place electrodes and a battery-powered device under the skin.
The dual-target approach used at CU Anschutz aimed at two different circuits in one session.
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The dentatorubral thalamic tract, or DRTT, helps regulate tremor.
The pallidothalamic tract, or PTT, is tied to stiffness, slowness and involuntary movements.
Treating both in a single visit is what makes the case reports unusual.
The evidence behind the procedure
Focused ultrasound for Parkinson's has been building a track record for years.
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In a randomized trial of 94 patients published in the New England Journal of Medicine in February 2023, 69 percent of patients treated with focused ultrasound of the globus pallidus responded, compared with 32 percent in the sham group.
Most side effects were mild or moderate and included slurred speech and gait problems.
United States regulators have expanded the use of the treatment step by step.
The FDA cleared focused ultrasound for stiffness, slowness and dyskinesia in Parkinson's in November 2021, on top of its earlier approval for medication-resistant tremor.
In 2025, the agency approved a staged bilateral procedure, allowing treatment on both sides of the brain in two sessions at least six months apart.
What the case reports do and do not show
Two patients is a very small number.
Case reports like these can suggest that a technique is feasible and can capture dramatic short-term effects, but they cannot show how often the benefit lasts, how safe the combined targeting is over time, or which patients are the best candidates.
Parkinson's disease affects an estimated 1.1 million people in the United States, a figure the Parkinson's Foundation projects will rise to 1.2 million by 2030.
The condition slowly damages the brain cells that make dopamine, and current treatments manage symptoms rather than stop the disease.
Anyone with Parkinson's who is considering a surgical or ultrasound treatment should discuss the options, and the timing, with their neurologist.
Focused ultrasound is offered at a growing number of centers across the country, and a doctor familiar with the patient's history is the right person to weigh whether it fits.
This article is made and published by Ida-Marie Palm Varbæk, who may have used AI in the preparation.