Prevalence of movement disorders in an elderly nursing home population

Winona Tse, Leslie S. Libow, Richard Neufeld, Gerson Lesser, Judith Frank, Susan Dolan, Chaim Tarshish, Jean Michel Gracies, C. Warren Olanow, William C. Koller, Thomas D. Hälbig

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

23 Scopus citations

Abstract

We studied the prevalence of movement disorders in a large nursing home population (397 patients, mean age 86 years) in New York City. Patients were first evaluated by specially trained research coordinators and final clinical diagnoses were confirmed by a movement disorder specialist. A movement disorder was identified in 21% of patients (83/397). The most frequent movement disorders were essential tremor (ET) (8.8%) and parkinsonism (7.1%). Only half of those admitted with a diagnosis of parkinsonism were confirmed in their diagnosis by the movement disorder specialists. Three percent of patients exhibited drug-induced tremor, 1.3% had dystonia, 0.5% had myoclonus and 0.3% had generalized dyskinesias. Overall, our findings underline the high frequency of movement disorders in a nursing home population. The discrepancy between our findings and the prevalence rates for parkinsonism reported on the initial transfer diagnosis emphasizes the difficulty of accurate diagnosis of movement disorders and in particular parkinsonism.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)359-366
Number of pages8
JournalArchives of Gerontology and Geriatrics
Volume46
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - May 2008

Keywords

  • Frail elderly
  • Geriatric population
  • Long-term care population
  • Movement disorders
  • Parkinsonism
  • Tremor

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