In figures:

• Some 160,000 people suffer from Parkinson’s disease in Spain. It is estimated that the figure is closer to 300,000 affected.
• Every year about 10,000 new cases of Parkinson’s disease are diagnosed in Spain.
• It is the second neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer’s disease.
• Seventy percent of people diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease are over 65,
• Fifteen percent are under 50 years of age.
• Patients take an average of 1 to 3 years to obtain a diagnosis.
• Between 20 and 25% of patients affected by Parkinson’s disease require an annual hospital admission.
• PD represents a very important economic cost for the country, which can reach up to more than 17,000 € per year.

April 11 World Parkinson’s Day

Today, April 11, is World Parkinson’s Day. The objective of this date is to recognize the affected people, their family and professional caregivers and the medical staff who work to improve their quality of life and research to find effective treatments. It also has the fundamental purpose of informing society about this neurodegenerative disease so that no patient suffers because of the ignorance and misunderstanding of others.

Parkinson’s disease is defined by the presence of several motor symptoms: rigidity, slowness, resting tremor and gait instability. Not all patients have all these symptoms; in fact, one third of patients never develop tremor. But the disease is much more and today we know that it has multiple invisible symptoms such as insomnia, mood alteration, difficulty in thinking and concentrating, constipation, sweating, urinary urgency, loss of smell (yes, not only covid gives “hyposmia”) and dizziness, among others.

Parkinson’s patients lose their ability to generate a brain messenger called dopamine that is involved in the coordination of movement. There is no imaging or blood test that confirms the diagnosis of the disease. On the contrary, the diagnosis is based on the neurologist’s experience when interpreting the patient’s history and neurological examination. It is important to know that there is an effective treatment and therefore early diagnosis is very important. Nowadays, there are multiple drugs that help to alleviate the symptoms and even the possibility of therapies with continuous infusion pumps with apomorphine or intestinal levodopa and also surgery by intracranial stimulation or ultrasound (HIFU).

In the Neurology Service of the Ruber Internacional Hospital, we have a program dedicated to Movement Disorders. Directed by the Dr. Monica Kurtis.