Quantitative assessment of gait in elderly people affected by Parkinson's Disease

Assessment of gait abnormalities in individuals affected by Parkinson's Disease (PD) is essential in evaluating the disease progression and the effectiveness of pharmacologic and rehabilitative treatments. However, in the clinical routine qualitative and subjective methods are often employed to this aim, despite the availability of sophisticated equipment able to supply accurate and detailed quantitative information. In this study, we propose the use of motion capture systems based on optoelectronic stereophotogrammetry to investigate the main spatio-temporal and kinematics parameters of gait in a cohort of 28 individuals with PD of age > 60. In particular, we aimed to describe the gait kinematics on the basis of concise measures (Gait Profile Score, GPS and Gait Variable Score, GVS) obtained from a quantitative three-dimensional analysis of gait. The results show that peculiar features are identifiable, especially in terms of functional limitations of hip and knee joints and confirm the validity of the GPS approach to describe the deviations from a physiologic gait pattern. Such method might be very useful in helping clinicians to detect even subtle changes in gait patterns (that would be impossible to observe with other techniques) consequent to either pharmacologic or rehabilitative treatments.