The Effects of Bilateral Subthalamic Deep Brain Stimulation on Gait in Patients with Parkinson’s Disease

Pariknson’s diease is one of common neurodegenerative disorder, and the most obvious symptoms are bradykinesia, rigidity, resting tremor, posture/gait imbalance. Although medication can improve Parkinson''s symptoms, but long-term efficacy of medication will appear the phenomenon of wearing-off. Subthalamic deep brain stimulation (DBS surgery) was proved to an effective treatment to overcome difficulties in the medical management of motor complications in advanced Parkinson’s disease. Although there are literatures about Parkinson''s disease or surgery on gait in Parkinson''s disease, there is very limited study on investigation of the changes of gait characteristics during level walking between major affected and minor affected side by using quantitative analysis of the stereophotogrammetry in the literature. Therefore, the study aimed to compare the changes of gait characteristics in advanced PD patients on minor affected side and major affected side at pre- and post- DBS surgery, respectively. Now this research find that step width is decreasing in minor side (P<0.05), however statistics has not yet reached significant in other gait parameter, such as gait velocity, gait step, gait stride and cadence. DBS surgery has more effects on hip joint and ankle joint in the major side, and it has more effects on knee joint in the minor side. The research results suspect that DBS surgery puts different influence on the major side and the minor side, so it is need to distinguish the major side and minor side to discuss in the future.