The confinement of the past few months, and the coronavirus 19 (Covid-19) disease pandemic, have had a great impact on our patients with movement disorders. These patients are people who, because of their underlying disease, have great difficulty moving, suffering from slowness, stiffness and sometimes tremor or unsteadiness of gait. During the strict confinement, from March to May, the patients suffered a very significant decrease in their physical and social activity, as well as the restriction of face-to-face consultations in the hospital to only urgent ones.
During our contacts by video call or telephone, patients told us about the increase in symptoms, not only in terms of mobility, but also in terms of mood, such as anxiety or insomnia.
From the medical and scientific community we wanted to investigate the impact of confinement and pandemic on people with movement disorders. We believe that it is our duty to study and analyze our findings, in order to be able to guide patients, their caregivers and also those in government who have the power to decide on health legislation.
For these reasons we collected data from these contacts, a study conducted with our patients, from the Functional Disorders Unit, and which has been published in Movement Disorders, an international journal of great prestige, for which we are proud and honored. According to the study data these patients suffered a deterioration of their general health but their motor symptoms remained relatively stable.
We also want to share another study from a Spanish research group, Galician in this case, on the impact of covid-19 in more than 500 patients with Parkinson’s disease. From here we congratulate our colleagues and disseminate their findings also published in Movement Disorders. This study shows that more than half of the patients with Parkinson’s disease (67%) reported worsening of their motor symptoms during confinement.
This research has been possible thanks to the collaboration of the patients, who have generously offered their time to answer the surveys. We would like to express our most sincere gratitude for helping us to advance our knowledge and obtain data. Our hope is that they can be used in the future to guide therapeutic interventions and thus alleviate the impact of covid-19 in patients with movement disorders.
Entry made by the Movement Disorders Program Team:
