New study looks into treating OCD with pacemakers

Pacemakers have long been used to treat heart problems, but now a new study is looking at their use in the brain to treat debilitating conditions like obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

The studies are being conducted in the hope that the simple medical device, which has been around for decades, could be used in future to treat depression and anorexia.

Nanette Vardy-Forth has been living with OCD for decades.

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She started to notice different behaviours from the age of five.

"Checking that the taps are off, the switches are off, that everything is facing the right way ... so the house is not going to burn down," she told A Current Affair.

"I didn't know what was wrong and I had a little break down one day and my mother took me to the doctors and he diagnosed it straight away as OCD."

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Mrs Vardy-Forth said she had to religiously do tasks in sets of four or thoughts of doom would overwhelm her.

"You keep repeating, repeating the checking, hoping that feeling goes away … It doesn't go away. It just lingers," she said.

Mrs Vardy-Forth even feared if she didn't get everything right, something bad would happen to her husband.

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But then a new clinical trial came along, placing pacemakers in the brain to treat OCD.

"I was so desperate to try anything. You'll try anything when you're in that situation," Mrs Vardy-Forth said.

Professor Pankaj Sah, from the Queensland Brain Institute, was part of the trial which treated 10 severe OCD patients.

"The big part of the problem with OCD is the anxiety that goes along with having to want to do these things, and having to do them to relieve that anxiety," he said.

"Rather than having to do something over and over and feel awful about it, that awfulness is controlled."

The trial worked by placing probes into a specific part of the brain.

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During the trial the patients were awake during the surgery, given tasks and shown pictures which triggered them, so the surgeons knew they were in the right area.

The probes were then attached to a pacemaker-type device placed in the abdomen, which constantly stimulates the brain.

Neurologist Professor Peter Silburn helped perform the surgeries, which had positive results in nine of the 10 trial participants.

"On occasion we'd test stimulate it and people felt great calm over them, some people felt great anxiety, so we knew we were in the right circuit," Professor Silburn said.

"When people have got these intractable illnesses that you've tried the drugs, and you've tried all the other therapies and you can come along and watch it change in an instant, that's a different world."

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Dr Philip Mosley was the psychiatrist monitoring the patients throughout the trial. He said while the treatment doesn't remove the OCD completely, it relaxes the anxiety that goes along with it.

"They're now able to sit with the thoughts, not respond to their compulsions, go about their day to day lives," he said.

But all the doctors believe there's so much more to be done and a new trial has just started using the same therapy on those with severe cases of anorexia.

"A little device like this is treating OCD, we hope to be anorexia, we hope addiction, certainly depression and it's already been well established for Parkinson's, dystonia and tremors," Professor Silburn said.

"I think the governments will see the advantage of this, we needed everyone to know it's a therapy that can be applied to different conditions."

For Ms Vardy-Forth the trial has been life-changing because she no longer feels ruled by OCD. She just hopes it can soon be made available to more people.

"It's like a new lease of life they've given me and I'm so appreciative," she said.