It is a personal decision whether to go to surgery or not, but our group really believes in letting patients known all the options. The spoon only solves one p

It is a personal decision whether to go to surgery or not, but our group really believes in letting patients known all the options. The spoon only solves one problem - scooping up liquid food. One can argue that a fork or knife version could help with other food. It doesn't solve writing, playing instruments, typing. Shaving may be a little too delicate for something like this. DBS when done right solves all of this. The problem with DBS is that best practices for implantation can vary widely, and I've seen it done really poorly, either with surgical groups with crappy experience w/ a lot of infections or poorly targeted leads that are many millimeters off the intended brain target. Our group prides ourselves in being pretty accurate most of the time, and with a complication rate of < 1%; of which I can't recall anyone who had a serious hemorrhage or death from this. One thing to note, it's a stereotactic neurosurgical setup, which means our surgeon uses a skull mounted frame that inserts the implant in a 1 cm burr hole. It's not a typical open craniotomy where a large segment of the skull gets removed. So in a sense, yes, it is invasive, but no, it's not as invasive as full blown surgery. We make sure all our patients who are candidates are aware of the risks and what the surgery entails going forward - both the eager beavers raring at the bit and the reluctant folks who are afraid of it. Many of them choose it, some of them don't. Some of them don't qualify, and that's every bit their decision.