A woman whose severe one-sided movement disorder had been controlled for five years by an implanted brain stimulator lost that control in public when the device ran out of charge. Her right arm lifted and extended into a posture her doctors compared to a Nazi salute.
Neurosurgeons at Hannover Medical School in Germany published the case this year in Movement Disorders Clinical Practice, titling it, without euphemism, an embarrassing situation. In Germany, publicly performing that gesture is a criminal offense, which is what turned a device failure into a social emergency for the patient.
