Objective: The purpose of this study is to investigate the gait in early stage of PD who did not complain of gait disturbance using three-dimensional (3D) motion capture.

Background: Gait disturbance is a cardinal symptom in Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, gait disturbance is frequently unveiled in early stage PD especially in tremor dominant type. With technical development, gait analysis is enable to measure and discriminate gait pattern objectively. We compare gait parameter from 3D motion capture in PD patients with and without gait disturbance and control group.

Method: 46 patients diagnosed as PD and 19 age-matched control were enrolled. 31 PD patients were suffered from gait disturbance and 15 patients did not. All participants were asked to walk under three 3D motion capture, and were performed several clinical scales including Hoehn and Yahr (H&Y) stage, Tinetti mobility test (TMT), Timed-up and go test (TUG). We compare the gait parameter among groups.

Results: Among various gait parameters, foot height is significant different in PD without gait disturbance compared to control. Other parameters including step, stride length and walking speed did not show differences between PD without gait disturbance and control.  TUG is significantly correlated with foot heights than other clinical scales.

Conclusion: We found that foot height which reflect shuffling gait is decreased in PD without gait disturbance. These findings suggest that shuffling gait may be easily underestimated, and clinician judge gait status based on walking speed or step length. Our results support that gait analysis may provide helpful information to detect sub-clinical gait disturbance in early stage of PD.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/shuffling-gait-may-be-pitfall-in-neurological-examination-in-parkinsons-disease/