• Parkinsonism Relat. Disord. · Jul 2015

    The walk-bicycle: A new assistive device for Parkinson's patients with freezing of gait?

    • Claudia Stummer, Valeria Dibilio, Sebastiaan Overeem, Vivian Weerdesteyn, Bastiaan R Bloem, and Jorik Nonnekes.
    • Radboud University Medical Centre, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Department of Neurology, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Electronic address: Claudia.Stummer@radboudumc.nl.
    • Parkinsonism Relat. Disord. 2015 Jul 1; 21 (7): 755-7.

    BackgroundPrevious studies reported a preserved ability to cycle in freezers, creating opportunities for restoring mobility and independence. However, use of a bicycle is not always feasible. Here, we investigated the effectiveness of a "walk-bicycle" in reducing freezing of gait (FOG).MethodsEighteen Parkinson patients with FOG performed the following tasks, each four times, with and without the walk-bicycle: (1) normal walking; (2) walking with small steps, at normal speed; (3) walking with small steps, as rapidly as possible.ResultsSeven patients showed FOG during walking without the walk-bicycle. In those patients, the walk-bicycle afforded a 12% reduction of time frozen (p = 0.026). In 11 patients no FOG was observed during walking without the walk-bicycle. Two of them showed FOG when using the walk-bicycle.ConclusionsThe walk-bicycle may help to reduce FOG in some patients, but not in all. Future studies need to evaluate its usefulness in a home environment.Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…