Robbie Lettieri

Since Robbie Lettieri was nine years old, he was never able to live a normal childhood due to the severity of his Tourette syndrome, a neurological disorder that causes uncontrollable physical and verbal tics. Each tic episode lasted about two hours and it overtook not only his life, but the life of his family.

Frustrated that medications to control symptoms never worked, Robbie and his parents went to Alon Mogilner, MD and Michael Pourfar, MD at The Movement Disorders Center at North Shore University Hospital, to see if Robbie might be a candidate for deep brain stimulation surgery, commonly used in Parkinson’s patients, that requires surgically implanting electrodes deep in the brain. After a thorough internal hospital committee review of Robbie’s case, physicians decided unanimously to proceed with the surgery. Robbie had a six-hour-long surgery on January 18, 2011.

To date, Robbie has had a dramatic reduction in his tics and has been nearly tic free for weeks at a time. “I can do everything that a normal 17 year old takes for granted,” he says. “I began driving and was even given a curfew now that I am allowed to go out with my friends. And after years of never being able to be left alone at the house, now I can. As for the future, I plan to go to college in the hope of eventually becoming a doctor