[Future standards in diagnosing Parkinson syndrome].
[Future standards in diagnosing Parkinson syndrome].
A plain-language reading has not been prepared for this paper yet.
Original abstract
So far, the diagnosis of an idiopathic Parkinson-syndrome was based on the British Brain Bank Criteria, that is the occurrence of bradykinesia together with at least one more of the cardinal symptoms, i. e. resting tremor, rigidity or postural instability. The latter symptom is not useful, since it occurs only in the Hoehn and Yahr stage III which is seen in advanced PD patients. Thus, this symptom is certainly not useful for EARLY diagnosis. Early signs for PD are hyposmia, constipation, REM sleep behaviour disorder and depression. Early diagnosis is still a clinical one, which can be supported by a levodopa test. It can be expected that in the near future gene chips will be available for patients with a positive family history for PD or with an early onset. As long as a blood test for PD is not available, methods such as SPECT and PET are extremely useful in patients with an unclear clinical symptomatology. In my own view, each PD patient should receive once in his career a cranial CT or MRI.