Journal of Alzheimers Disease & Parkinsonism
Open Access

Research Article

Comparison of Parkinson Disease Patients Who Fell Once with Patients Who Fell More than Once (Recurrent Fallers)

Abraham Lieberman^1*, Narayanan Krishnamurthi^1,2, Rohit Dhall¹, Naomi Salins¹, Pan D² and Aman Deep¹

¹ Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center (MAPC) at Barrow Neurological Institute, St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, Phoenix, AZ, USA

² Center for Adaptive Neural Systems, School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

Corresponding Author:

Abraham Lieberman
Director, Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center
Barrow Neurological Institute
St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center
Phoenix, AZ, 85013, USA
E-mail: Abraham.Lieberman@dignityhealth.org

Received date: February 01, 2014; Accepted date: February 28, 2014; Published date: March 15, 2014

Citation: Lieberman A, Krishnamurthi N, Dhall R, Salins N, Pan D, et al. (2014) Comparison of Parkinson Disease Patients Who Fell Once with Patients Who Fell More than Once (Recurrent Fallers). J Alzheimers Dis Parkinsonism 4:140. doi: 10.4172/2161-0460.1000140

Copyright: © 2014 Lieberman A, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided theoriginal author and source are credited.

Falls are a major risk for Parkinson disease patients (PD). Single falls, in older peoplemay be related to the underlying disease or may be accidental. Recurrent falls are more likely to be related to the underlying disease. We followed 401persons with PD for a year, 205 of whom, 51.0%, fell: 161 fell once and 44 fell more than once (recurrent fallers). Recurrent fallers had PD significantly longer, 12.6 ± 7.0 versus 5.9 + 4.5 years, had significantly higher, worse, motor Unified Parkinson Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) scores” 31.2 ± 12.7 versus 19.7 + 8.3. The major difference between recurrent and single fallers was an inability of recurrent fallers to stand on one leg for < 3 seconds: 95% versus 11%, odds ratio 178 CI 95% 39.5 – 801.2 single fallers who are unable to stand on one foot for < 3 seconds may be at risk for recurrent falls. Gait and balance training focused on improving a patient’s ability to stand on one leg may decrease the risk of recurrent falls in PD.

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