Quantifying the short-term effects of deep brain stimulation surgery on bradykinesia in Parkinson's disease patients

Abstract

Clinical scale-based follow-up of patients undergoing bilateral subthalamic deep brain stimulation (STN-DBS) surgery has shown inconsistent effects on bradykinesia in Parkinson's disease patients. Furthermore, quantitative assessment of STN-DBS effect on bradykinesia has not been fully explored yet. Our group uses multisensory kinematic technologies to study short-term and long-term DBS effects on Parkinson's disease. In this paper we present a kinematic analysis of the short term (3 month) effects of STN-DBS on bradykinesia in five PD patients and compare the results with data obtained from healthy age-matched controls.