Abstract
Purpose: Freezing of Gait (FOG) is one of outstanding feature that commonly affects patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). PD Patients typically experience abrupt episodes for interrupting steps while they walk. This leads an incidence of falls and difficulties of daily living. While FOG questionnaire is usually utilize to classify an incidence of FOG, the sensitivity for detecting FOG is not enough. In the present study, we aimed to develop novel evaluation approach for FOG by observing relationship between amount of time required for passing through the door and width of the pass-point. This idea is came from a previous finding that the width of doorway is one of critical factors for the induction of FOG, and many patients are usually having difficulty for passing through the doorway.
Methods: Sixteen PD patients participated and were asked to walk at their comfortable speed on the liner path (4 meters) and pass through the doorway with seven different extents (40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 cm).
Results: Our results demonstrated that the relationship between amount of time required for passing through the door and width of pass-point can be fitted as a liner-regression. The slope of regression line has relevance to UPRDS Part3 score which is a reliable clinical score describing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (r = 0.56, p < 0.05).
Conclusion: The developed evaluation approach in this study would be useful not only for the evaluation for FOG, but also identifying an effect of therapeutic intervention for FOG in PD patients.
