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Dr. DeMarcaida Makes ‘Woman of Distinction’ List

December 09, 2019

Hartford Magazine uses words like “exceptional” and “significant” to describe the 30 Women of Distinction profiled in its December issue.

And, right there on page 49 is Dr. J. Antonelle de Marcaida, medical director of the Hartford HealthCare Ayer Neuroscience Institute’s Chase Family Movement Disorders Center.

Dr. de Marcaida, a neurologist who founded the Chase Center, is also on the board of the American Parkinson’s Disease Association’s Connecticut chapter and director of its referral center.

“A limitation in medicine is that we are very good about treating disease, but with a chronic, lifelong, neurodegenerative condition such as Parkinson’s with no cure, we want to be there to provide care and support and robust wellness programs,” she is quoted as saying in her Hartford Magazine profile.

The Chase Family Movement Disorders Center now has a staff of 30, including eight movement disorder specialists. The team sees patients with Parkinson’s, Huntington’s Tourette’s syndrome and dystonia, offering a combination of diagnostic and therapeutic treatment to help improve the patients’ quality of life.

Dr. de Marcaida coordinates care based on a multidisciplinary approach that incorporates therapies such as botulin toxin (Botox) injections, oral medications, deep brain stimulation to stimulate specific parts of the brain much like a pacemaker for the heart, and an intraintestinal pump to administer medication. She is also an active researcher, part of the body of scientists and physicians working to find a cure or a way to at least slow the progression of neurodegenerative disorders.

There are currently two locations for the Chase Family Movement Disorders Center, with a third opening in Mystic in January and a fourth in Westport by the end of 2020. For more information on the Center, click here.