Training Helps Parkinson's Patients Avoid Falls

[Guest guest]

This is for those who like to keep abreast of rehab related

reports/studies/EBM. This came from the Medscape.com website.

Babich, PT, MS, CSCS

Columbus, OH

--------------------------------------------------------

Training Helps Parkinson's Patients Avoid Falls

By

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Dec 22 - Repetitive training can help patients with

Parkinson's disease deal with the postural instability that often leads to

falls and even fear of walking, German researchers report in the December

issue of the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

As lead investigator Dr. Jobges told Reuters Health, " postural

instability is a common and serious problem in Parkinson's disease and

dopaminergic medication is of negligible influence. "

" We developed a repetitive training of compensatory steps to enhance

protective postural responses by using training strategies based on recent

neurophysiological research. "

Dr. Jobges and colleagues at the University of Leipzig, Bennewitz studied 14

patients who underwent a baseline-training phase, followed by 2 weeks of

repetitive postural training for 20 minutes twice daily.

During and after these processes the subjects repeatedly underwent analysis

of compensatory steps, posture and gait. During testing the patients were

given visual feedback on a computer screen showing the actual position of their

center of gravity.

There were significant changes in a variety of measures. Step length

increased, gait velocity improved and self-rated mobility scores increased. At 2

months, without further training, the improvements continued to be stable.

Thus, concluded Dr. Jobges, " the repetitive training of compensatory steps is

an effective approach in the therapy of postural instability and should be

applied if postural instability is evident clinically or in patient history. "

J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2004;75:1682-1687.