Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease of the central nervous system with complex etiology. This disease is related to the consumption of dopamine in the substantia nigra of the brain, and it is currently believed that the main factors of consumption of dopamine are (1) heredity (2) aging (3) environment.
At present, there are many rehabilitation treatments available for patients with Parkinson's disease, such as: progressive resistance training, yoga, Tai Chi, dancing, cognitive training, balance training, gait training, bicycle, and treadmill training, etc. During the recent years, the POWER rehabilitation system from Japan (Procedure Outcome Worthwhile for Elderly Rehabilitation, referred to as POWER rehabilitation) including six types of equipment for strengthening different body parts has been applied to frail elderly or neurological patients gradually.
Parkinson's patients are often considered to have major difficulties in responding to motion disturbances (inability to respond appropriately), leading to learning, insufficient attention and motivation problems. Therefore, maintenance of motivation and feedback on performance are key factors that affect the participation of exercises in patients with Parkinson's disease.
The application of virtual reality in patients with PD is becoming more and more effective. An integrated rehabilitation system can not only enable the clinicians to check the rehabilitation status during the treatment, but also provide feedbacks to the patient through the interactive visual feedback screen. For Parkinson's patients, providing visual feedback through virtual reality intervention may be of particular clinical value.
In the first phase of this study, a virtual reality-like visual feedback system will be developed and combined with the original "POWER rehabilitation system" to form the so-called "Interactive POWER Rehabilitation System", and then system verification will be carried out. In the second phase of this study, this newly developed system will be applied to the rehabilitation training for patients with Parkinson's disease, and to explore whether the combination of POWER rehabilitation with visual feedback can produce the clinical benefits, as well as improving the daily life of patients with PD. Patients will be randomly assigned into three groups: interactive POWER, functional training, and control group. Single blind data collection will be used. Patients will be evaluated at baseline and post 12-week interventions. Outcome measures will include mini-BESTest, Unified Parkinson's disease rating scale, muscle strength of upper and lower extremities, timed up and go, 6-minute walking test, gait, and Parkinson's disease questionnaire PDQ-39.
It is expected that the "Interactive POWER Rehabilitation System" can promote the learning ability of patients with Parkinson's disease by adding visual feedbacks and enhance the treatment effects. It also offer rehabilitation clinicians more treatment options, lower the administrative costs of supporting staffs, reduce commuting costs for the patients, and elevate patients' desire to comply with the treatment program.
