The Wall Street Journal-20080205-Politics - Economics- China to Regulate Use Of Brain Procedure

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Politics & Economics: China to Regulate Use Of Brain Procedure

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The Chinese government will regulate the use of a form of brain surgery performed on patients with mental illnesses, according to a surgeon who leads a team performing the procedure.

Senior government officials -- including members of the Ministry of Health and the People's Liberation Army, which oversees some of the hospitals that offer the brain surgery -- attended a meeting in Beijing last month to evaluate the practice, according to people involved in the discussions and others familiar with them. In addition, at least one hospital now appears to have scaled back the use of the procedure.

The irreversible procedure involves drilling tiny holes in the skull and burning small parts of brain. Its relatively widespread use in China was reported in a page-one article in The Wall Street Journal in November.

Thousands of patients with psychiatric problems, ranging from depression to obsessive-compulsive disorder to schizophrenia have paid for the operation, often at a cost of around $5,000 -- the equivalent of several years' income for some families, especially in rural China, where many people have no insurance coverage. Some patients and families have complained that the surgery did nothing for their illness, and left them hobbled, unable to use their legs or arms.

Wang Yifang, who heads the team of surgeons who perform these operations at the No. 454 Hospital of the People's Liberation Army in Nanjing said he attended the meeting in Beijing last month. Dr. Wang said that officials from the Ministry of Health, the China Medical Association and many other experts, including legal specialists, attended.

Dr. Wang said that the group concluded that regulators, led by the Ministry of Health, should draft a set of standards to govern the use of the surgery. Those regulations are currently being drafted, he said, but it's not clear when they will be made public. "They are making strict standards now, but the government still supports the surgery," he said.

An official in the news office of the China Medical Association, whose Web site says it has more than 430,000 members, confirmed a recent meeting to discuss surgery for mental illness and to gather experts on the subject, but declined to provide more details. He said that the meeting had been called by the association at the request of a higher government authority, declining to specify whom.

A person familiar with the matter said that Minister of Health Chen Zhu had ordered the meeting.

Mao Qunan, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health, said he was unable to confirm that a meeting took place or to provide other details.

The Journal article told the stories of two families who had taken family members diagnosed with schizophrenia to the No. 454 Hospital. In at least one case, a surgeon there said he had operated on a patient only hours after meeting him. The article also cited other hospitals that have offered the procedure to at least a few thousand patients in recent years.

In very rare cases in the U.S., after rigorous screening, surgeons will perform the procedure on patients as a last resort to treat certain psychiatric illnesses, although not schizophrenia.

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Ellen Zhu contributed to this article.