Incisionless Brain Treatment Calms Tremors, Patient Goes Home Same Day
BALTIMORE – November 06, 2026 -- A Baltimore retiree who struggled to flip pancakes because of hand tremors went home the same day after an incisionless brain treatment at MedStar Franklin Square Medical Center.
Mark Hunter, a grandfather who spent 25 years as a police officer, lives with essential tremor, a neurological condition that makes the hands shake involuntarily. Putting a screwdriver into a screw could take both hands. He became MedStar Health's first patient to undergo focused ultrasound.
The procedure took just over two hours
Dr. Justin Martello, chief of Neurology for the Baltimore region, performed the treatment. Focused ultrasound uses concentrated sound waves, guided by real-time MRI, to target the ventral intermediate nucleus (VIM) of the thalamus, a small structure in the brain. A carefully controlled lesion there disrupts the abnormal signals associated with tremor.