Accuracy of Objective Ambulatory Accelerometry in Detecting Motor Complications in Patients With Parkinson Disease

Abstract

Shortcomings of existing assessment methods in Parkinson disease (PD) have led to the development of continuous ambulatory multichannel accelerometry for the assessment of the core features of PD. Although measures for hypokinesia, bradykinesia, and tremor have been validated in groups of patients with PD, it is unclear whether this method is able to detect "on" with or without dyskinesias, and "off" in individual PD patients. This study therefore addressed the accuracy of objective ambulatory accelerometry in detecting motor complications in 15 PD patients, using a self-assessment scale as gold standard. Measures for hypokinesia, bradykinesia, and tremor showed limited sensitivity (0.60-0.71) and specificity (0.66-0.76) for motor complications in individual PD patients. In the group of PD patients, comparing the "on" with the "off" state yielded statistically significant differences for tremor only. Objective dyskinesia measures correlated with time spent with dyskinesias (r = 0.89). Although validated for the measurement of hypokinesia, bradykinesia, and tremor, continuous ambulatory multichannel accelerometry currently cannot detect "on" and "off" in individual PD patients.

Objective and quantitative assessment of motor function in Parkinson’s disease—from the perspective of practical applications

“…In fact, many typical motor function disorders of PD such as tremor, postural instability, gait deficits, and dyskinesia tend to appear in the later course of disease, making them unsuitable for early diagnosis (15,16). Therefore some studies have been focused on atypical motions, like drawing ability (17) and movement symmetry (18,19), which may become a supplementary basis for the early diagnosis of PD.…”

24-Hour Recording of Parkinsonian Gait Using a Portable Gait Rhythmogram

“…Wrist-or belt-mounted accelerometers (5)(6)(7)(8) or six tri-axial accelerometers (9) have been used to monitor the degree of akinesia. Although the measurements of acceleration can provide a rough estimate of the quantity of movements, the nature of the executed movements remains unclear.…”

Stereotactic implantation of deep brain stimulation electrodes: a review of technical systems, methods and emerging tools

“…It exist a variety of laboratory-based systems to quantitatively measure and analyse body movement. This includes systems for movement analysis of dystonia [72], tremor [11,33,95], bradykinesia [29,65], gait [8,48,61] and levodopa induced dyskinesias [37,55].…”