Surgical relief aids Parkinson's patients

Parkinson's disease is one of the most common movement disorders that Li Yongjie and his colleagues at the Beijing Institute of Functional Neurosurgery have been fighting over the past 20 years.

China has more than 2 million patients with Parkinson's, accounting for about 40 percent of the global total. With the country's population aging rapidly, the number is rising.

The condition was first described in 1817 by British physician James Parkinson as "shaking palsy". Medical scientists now know the disease is caused by the degeneration of neurons in a region of the brain that controls movement.