Profile of patients enrolled in a new movement disorder clinic

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
To assess the need for a regional expertise in movement disorders, the numbers of patients, clinic visits, and medication changes for a new movement disorder clinic were recorded. During 3½ years, 355 patients were seen, with 1,329 clinic visits. Idiopathic Parkinson's disease was the most common diagnosis, comprising 36% of the population, followed by dystonia (17%), tremor (12%), parkinsonism (i. e., Parkinson's plus syndromes, drug‐induced parkinsonism, etc.) (10%), chorea (10%), Tourette's syndrome (6.5%), and tardive dyskinesia (3.4%). Distribution of follow‐up visits was similar, with Parkinson's disease (52%) being most frequent and Tourette's syndrome (3.1%) least frequent. The relative utilization of medical care by each patient group was assessed by determining the number of medication changes and the number of clinic visits per follow‐up year. No differences in these measures were found using a one‐way analysis of variance. Of the Parkinson's disease patients, 67% had Hoehn and Yahr stages III‐IV and 77% of the clinic visits were made by this subgroup. When considered in light of the prevalence of each of the diseases, these data show a need for an expertise in movement disorders for a population base of the size we have served.

This publication has 5 references indexed in Scilit: