Physiotherapy in Parkinson's Disease (PD): Towards Evidence Based Practice

Brief outline (Detailed outline) 

Participants to this satellite education session will be offered: The latest insights in Parkinson’s disease (PD), e.g. medical treatment, and progression of activity limitations; The latest advances of physiotherapy in PD, including treatment for falls and freezing, and details of cues, cognitive movement strategies and exercising; The latest advances of implementation of evidence-based physiotherapy in PD.

Objectives

• What is PD and what are the benefits and drawbacks of medical treatment?
• Which physiotherapy interventions can be used to prevent or reduce impairments, limitations, and participation restriction in PD?
• How to implement evidence-based physiotherapy for PD?

Organiser

Samyra Keus & Marten Munneke (Netherlands) 

Samyra Keus, PT PhD is a senior researcher (postdoc) at the Neurology department of the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre. In 2010, she gained her PhD degree on Physiotherapy in Parkinson's disease. Towards evidence-based practice. She is 1st author of the Dutch official evidence-based guideline for physiotherapy in PD (Mov Disord, 2009; www.kngf.nl). Samyra was chair of the Dutch national task force which developed recommendations to optimize the organization of multidisciplinary care in PD (2010) and national coordinator of the ParkinsonNet trial (2005-2006). Her subjects of interest are the development & implementation of guidelines for PD.

Marten Munneke, PT PhD, is a Principal Investigator at the Neurology department of the Radboud University Medical Centre. Furthermore, he is scientific director of ParC (Parkinson Centre Nijmegen), a National Parkison Foundation (NPF, U.S.A.) acknowledged centre of excellence (from 2002 onwards). Here he was, together with Prof. Bloem, founder of ParkinsonNet, regional networks for the optimization of multidisciplinary PD care (ParkinsonNet trial, Lancet, 2010). Marten’s main subjects of interest are physical fitness in PD, the development & implementation of guidelines for PD, and improving coordination of multidisciplinary PD care.

Speakers

Bastiaan Bloem (Netherlands) 

Bastiaan Bloem, MD PhD (Postural reflexes in Parkinson’s disease, 1994) is a consultant neurologist at the Department of Neurology, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre. He is founder (2002) and Medical Director of ParC (see Marten Munneke). He co-directs the Nijmegen Motor Unit, a fully equipped gait and balance laboratory. Bastiaan is a Professor in Neurology, with movement disorders as special area of interest. He is President of the International Society for Gait and Postural Research, and is on the editorial board for several national and international journals, including the Movement Disorders journal.

Meg Morris (Australia)

Meg Morris, PT PhD, is the Head of Health Sciences at The University of Melbourne. Her primary research interests and expertise involve enabling people with neurological conditions, such as PD, to move more easily, prevent falls and optimize quality of life. She has a lot of expertise on pathogenesis of gait disorders in PD and the effects of movement strategies on basal ganglia dysfunction, ands was the first to describe a model for treatment of PD by physiotherapists (1994). Meg is a Fellow of the Australian College of Physiotherapists and a member of the Australian Physiotherapy Association.

Margaret Mak (Hong Kong)

Margaret Mak, PT PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Margaret studies motor planning, balance and functional problems in PD. Her ongoing research projects include the examination of the efficacy of feed-forward audio-visual training for enhancing walking under dual-task conditions, the significance of fear of falling in predicting PD fallers and the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the positive effect of audio-visual cues. Margaret is vice-president and founding fellow (neuro-rehabilitation) at the Hong Kong College of Physiotherapy.

Ann Ashburn (United Kingdom)

Ann Ashburn is a professor at the University of Southampton, where she leads a research programme on neurorehabilitation. She has a particular interest in the management of fall events among people with stroke and people with Parkinson’s disease and in exploring, at a behavioural level, the mechanism of balance control, assessment and training of balance. In this she studied e.g. the effectiveness of a personalised home programme of exercises and strategies for repeat-fallers with Parkinson's disease (JNNP, 2007). Currently she is studying the eye, head and body coordination during turning by people with Parkinson’s disease.

Victoria Goodwin (United Kingdom)

Victoria Goodwin, MSc, is working as a PhD student at the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry at the Universities of Exeter and Plymouth. Her subject of interest is falls in PD. As part of her thesis, she has carried out a systematic review and meta-analysis on the effectiveness of exercise interventions for people with PD (Movement Disorders, 2008).

Yvo Kamsma (Netherlands)

Yvo Kamsma, PT PhD, is lecturer and coordinator of Human Movement Sciences (MSc) at the Medical Faculty of the University Medical Centre Groningen. In the past, he investigated the possibilities for learning PD patients compensatory cognitive strategies to improve mobility, which are described in the Dutch evidence-based guidelines for physiotherapy in PD. His current interests are (1) the development of objective instruments to measure ADL performance and effects of movement interventions, and (2) the  relationship between motor behaviour and cognitive functioning and how to deal with this in PD treatment.

Alice Nieuwboer (Belgium)

Alice Nieuwboer, PT PhD is a professor at the Faculty of Kinesiology and Rehabilitation Sciences of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven where she is program director of courses in Rehabilitation Sciences. Her main research lines are (1) the influence of basal ganglia deficits on gait and upper limb movements and (2) the capability of the brain to restore function when affected by degenerative pathology. Alice was principal investigator of the EU-funded RESCUE-project (2002-2005) on cueing in Parkinson’s disease. Currently she now studying the effects of external stimuli during, exercise, dual tasking, motor imagery and motor learning in PD.

Erwin van Wegen (Netherlands)

Erwin van Wegen, PhD, is working as a senior researcher in neurorehabilitation at the department of Physical Therapy / Rehabilitation Medicine at the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam. He worked as a post-doc (2002-2005) in the RESCUE project, an international multicentre trial. Currently, he is principal or associate investigator on several grants in the field of neurorehabilitation, and coordinator for the clinical research master of the MOVE research institute at the VU University Medical Center. His subjects of interest are the coordination of locomotion and balance, as well as rehabilitation in movement disorders.

Lee Dibble (United States of America)

Lee Dibble, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy at the University of Utah. Dr Dibble's current research efforts focus on the effects of exercise interventions on postural control, functional mobility, and quality of life in persons with neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson disease and multiple sclerosis. Currently, he is the co-director of the University of Utah Rehabilitation and Wellness Clinic, which operates on the philosophy that exercise and physical activity advocacy are a critical component of the management of chronic neurologic disease.

Lynn Rochester (United Kingdom)

Lynn Rochester, PT PhD, is Professor of Human Movement Science in the Institute for Ageing and Health at Newcastle University. She leads a human movement and gait research unit which aims to advance patient diagnosis, assessment and treatment and to understand the effect of ageing on movement control.  She completed her PhD in muscle physiology and has a background in physiotherapy specialising in neuro-rehabilitation. Her main research interests are concerned with motor control of gait, motor learning and the complex interactions of motor and non-motor symptoms and their consequences on independent mobility.

Gert Kwakkel (Netherlands)

Gert Kwakkel, PT PhD is a professor of Neurorehabilitation at the VU University Medical Centre in Amsterdam. His chair is dedicated to translational research in the field of stroke rehabilitation, PD and multiple sclerosis. Currently, he is a directorate board member of the Research Institute MOVE (www.move.nl), European Managing Editor of Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair, and president of the Dutch Society of Neurorehabilitation (DSNR; www.neurorehab.nl). He published over 90 papers in leading scientific journals in the field of neurology and rehabilitation medicine with average citation per paper of 22.

Maarten Nijkrake (Netherlands)

Maarten Nijkrake, PT MSc, is working as a physiotherapist and PhD student at ParC (see Munneke) and the department of Rehabilitation of the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre. He developed quality indicators for physiotherapy in PD, set up the first ParkinsonNet (see Munneke), and national coordinator of the ParkinsonNet trial (2006-2009). In his thesis (2010) Maarten shows that ParkinsonNet improves quality of care and reduces total healthcare costs without any changes in the health status of patients. Currently, ParkinsonNet is disseminated throughout the Netherlands. Maarten is the national  coordinator of the physiotherapy component within ParkinsonNet.

Mark Hirsch (United States of America)

Mark Hirsch, PhD, is a research scientist at the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation of the Carolinas Medical Centre. He has a multidisciplinary background in education, gerontology and motor rehabilitation. Past work in his laboratory has been on PD and the effect of high intensity training in improving the cardinal signs and symptoms of the disease, and on altering the pathophysiology of the striatal circuitry. Current efforts are to translate the results from exercise studies conducted in the laboratory into a community wellness setting. In addition, Mark working at several Faculties of the University of North Carolina.

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Programme subject to change.