Objectives To assess the evidence for the existence and prevalence of sleep attacks in patients taking dopamine agonists for Parkinson's disease, the type of drugs implicated, and strategies for prevention and treatment.

ObjectivesOwing to a lack of data, our aim was to evaluate and compare the impact of various common neurological diseases on the risk for falls in independent community dwelling senior citizens.DesignProspective case-controlled study.SettingGeneral hospital.ParticipantsOf 298 consecutive patients and 214 controls enrolled, 228 patients (aged 74.5±7.8; 61% women) and 193 controls (aged 71.4±6.8; 63% women) were included. The exclusion criteria were as follows: for patients, severe disability, disabling general condition or severe cognitive impairment; for controls, any history of neurological disorders or disabling medical conditions; and for both, age below 60 years. A matching process led to 171 age-matched and gender-matched pairs of neurological patients and healthy controls.Main outcome measuresA 1-year incidence of falls based on patients' 12-month recall; motor and non-motor function tests to detect additional risk factors.Results46% of patients and 16% of controls fell at least once a year. Patients with stroke (89%), Parkinson’s disease (77%), dementia (60%) or epilepsy (57%) had a particularly high proportion of fallers, but even subgroups of patients with the least fall-associated neurological diseases like tinnitus (30%) and headache (28%) had a higher proportion of fallers than the control group. Neuropathies, peripheral nerve lesions and Parkinson's disease were predisposing to recurrent falls. A higher number of neurological comorbidities (p<0.001), lower Barthel Index values (p<0.001), lower Activities-Specific Balance Confidence scores (p<0.001) and higher Center of Epidemiological Studies Depression scores (p<0.001) as well as higher age (p<0.001) and female gender (p=0.003) proved to further increase the risk of falls.ConclusionsMedical practitioners, allied health professionals and carers should be aware that all elderly neurological patients seen in outpatient settings are potentially at high risk for falls; they should query them routinely about previous falls and fall risks and advise them on preventive strategies.

Direct repair of spondylolysis can be recommended for patients with a growing skeleton, a slight slip, an instability, or failure of conservative treatment. Thereby, a functional segment can be saved with a relatively small operation.

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Further prospective community-based well designed studies on accident risk in PD patients are needed to provide evidence based driving recommendations.

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Finger tapping, the most widely used test for evaluating motor dysfunction in Parkinson's disease (PD), was found to react sensitively to disease specific factors like disease severity and changes in medication. A possible interference caused by disease unrelated demographic factors--age, gender, education and dexterity--however has not yet been studied systematically. Various components of tapping performance of 187 healthy subjects and 200 PD patients were assessed by means of the BRAIN TEST, a digitalized test battery. The effects of demographic factors--above all education and age--were found to be significant. These influences generally affect different aspects of movement to a different extent, with speed and akinesia being affected more severely than dysmetria and arrhythmokinesis. Our study suggests that whenever precise assement of upper limb motor performance is needed, specific corrections for these demographic factors in both healthy controls and PD patients are necessary.