ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: As the most rapidly increasing neurodegenerative disease worldwide, Parkinson's disease is highly relevant to society. Successful treatment requires active patient participation. Patient education has been successfully implemented for many chronic diseases, such as diabetes and could also provide people with Parkinson's disease with skills to manage the disease better and to participate in shared decision making. MATERIAL AND METHODS: To prepare the implementation of a concept for patient education for people with Parkinson's disease, a structured consensus study was conducted and a pilot project formatively evaluated. The structured consensus study included experts from all over Germany. It consisted of two online surveys and an online consensus conference. The formative evaluation was conducted as three focus groups. Transcripts were evaluated using content-structuring qualitative content analysis. RESULTS: From the consensus procedure 59 consented statements emerged, mainly regarding the contents of a patient school and a group size of 6-8 persons. Only two statements could not be consented. The formative evaluation detected a tendency towards a positive attitude for a digital training format and a very positive evaluation of the contents. DISCUSSION: Overall, important recommendations for a patient school can be drawn from this study. The following subjects require further investigation: format, inclusion criteria, group composition and inclusion of caregivers.
Subject(s)
Parkinson Disease , Patient Education as Topic , Parkinson Disease/therapy , Humans , Patient Education as Topic/methods , Germany , Pilot Projects , Patient Participation , Consensus , Computer-Assisted Instruction/methods , Curriculum , Focus Groups , Male , Decision Making, SharedABSTRACT
High-frequency, conventional deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) in Parkinson's disease (PD) is usually applied bilaterally under the assumption of additive effects due to interhemispheric crosstalk. Theta burst stimulation (TBS-DBS) represents a new patterned stimulation mode with 5 Hz interburst and 200 Hz intraburst frequency, whose stimulation effects in a bilateral mode compared to unilateral are unknown. This single-center study evaluated acute motor effects of the most affected, contralateral body side in 17 PD patients with unilateral subthalamic TBS-DBS and 11 PD patients with bilateral TBS-DBS. Compared to therapy absence, both unilateral and bilateral TBS-DBS significantly improved (p < 0.05) lateralized Movement Disorder Society-Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale part III (MDS-UPDRS III) scores. Bilateral TBS-DBS revealed only slight, but not significant additional effects in comparison to unilateral TBS-DBS on total lateralized motor scores, but on the subitem lower limb rigidity. These results indicate that bilateral TBS-DBS has limited additive beneficial effects compared to unilateral TBS-DBS in the short term.
