Medical Questions » Brain Questions » Question No. 161
| Question: | My 82 year old husband has recently developed Parkinson' s disease, which is progressing guite rapidly, with shaking hands, light headedness etc. He is taking drugs and has seen several doctors, but none are able to help. Can you suggest any other treatment? |
| Answer: | Madam, I sympathise with you deeply! Parkinsonism is a dreadful disease because there is no cure, and in advanced cases, an intelligent brain can become trapped inside a body that refuses to obey even the simplest command appropriately. It is caused by a slow but steady deterioration of that part of the brain that coordinates muscle action.
Normally, if you bend a joint, the muscles on one side contract, while those on the other side relax. In Parkinsons disease, this smooth interaction of relaxation and contraction does not occur, and movements become jerky and unsteady. The brain is slow to coordinate necessary action to maintain balance, patients have a shuffling gait and falls are common. Muscles in the face are constantly in slight spasm, giving a wooden expression to the sufferer.
After all the bad news, there is some hope. There are a number of medications that will control (not cure) the condition, and slow its progression. Some are slow to act, and it can require a long period of trial and error to find the right drug combination. The medications are available only on prescription and go by many different names. No one drug is necessarily better than any other, and if your doctor feels that the response to treatment is not satisfactory, he/she will continue to experiment with different combinations and permutations to find the one best for the patient.
Physiotherapy is a very important adjunctive treatment that should be continued throughout the course of the disease.
As a last resort, in very serious cases, radical brain surgery can be undertaken.
The vast majority of patients can be given many additional useful years by these medications, and if you are not being appropriately controlled, pester your doctor to try different combinations and permutations in an attempt to ease the symptoms. |
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