Movement Disorders Subspecialty Clinic (UTMOVE)
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Movement Disorders group (UTMOVE), is the largest movement disorder clinic in Texas and Louisiana. Led by the Division Director, Mya Schiess, MD, our team provides comprehensive, compassionate, and progressive treatments. The movement disorder clinic offers care at three separate outpatient clinics and two teaching hospitals for over 6,000 patients, the majority of whom have Parkinson’s disease, Parkinsonian Syndromes, tremors, Dystonia, ataxia, motor system dysfunction, or Huntington’s disease.
Our mission is to offer individualized care that empowers patients and allows them to live their lives to the fullest, and to provide exceptional state of the art care for patients and families. Our multidisciplinary clinics include expertise in neurosurgery, psychiatry, neuropsychology, genetic counseling, social work, gait and balance rehabilitation, sleep medicine, and specialized programs in physical, occupational, and speech therapies.
Conditions we treat:
Our physicians specialize in diagnosing, treating, and managing the following conditions:
- Ataxia (inherited and acquired)
- Atypical Parkinsonism
- Corticobasal degeneration (CBD)
- Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB)
- Multiple System Atrophy (MSA)
- Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP)
- Dystonia
- Blepharospasm
- Generalized Dystonia
- Focal or segmental dystonia
- Huntington’s disease (HD)
- Myoclonus including Hemifacial spasm
- Parkinson’s disease
- Sleep Disorders:
- REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD)
- Restless legs syndrome (RLS)
- Spasticity
- Disorders of metabolism or neurotoxicity
- Tardive dyskinesia
- Tics
- Tourette’s syndrome
- Tremors
- Cerebellar tremor
- Dystonic tremor
- Essential tremor
Available Procedures and Procedural Expertise:
- Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS): for Parkinson’s disease, Essential tremor, and Dystonia. UTMOVE – ranked as a Top 10 DBS Implanting Center Worldwide.
- Spasticity management: Comprehensive pharmacological and surgical therapies including Intrathecal Baclofen Pump (ITB)
- Neurotoxin injection therapy: BotoxR, XeominR, MyoblocR or DysportR for dystonia, chronic migraine, and spasticity.
- Administration of rating scales and standardized questionnaires for motor and non-motor symptoms, cognition, and behavioral changes.
- Neuroimaging: CT, MRI, functional MRI, DAT scan, FDG PET, and SPECT.
The UTHealth/UTMOVE Huntington’s Disease Society of America (HDSA) Center of Excellence:
Led by Erin Furr-Stimming, MD, the program is one of 50 centers of excellence across the country and the only one in Texas. Our clinic has been designated a regional HDSA Center of Excellence one of four in the nation, with partnering sites in San Antonio, Waco, Austin and Lubbock, Texas to provide HD expertise and exceptional care for more patients and families suffering from Huntington’s disease.