Effectiveness of physiotherapy in Parkinson's disease: The feasibility of a randomised controlled trial

Received 27 September 2005; received in revised form 30 June 2006; accepted 8 July 2006.

Abstract

To study the feasibility of a large randomised controlled trial (RCT) evaluating the effectiveness of physiotherapy in Parkinson's disease (PD), 173 patients were asked to participate in a study with random allocation to best practice physiotherapy, or to no physiotherapy. The primary outcome measures were the Parkinson's disease questionnaire-39, the Parkinson activity scale, and a patient preference outcome scale (PPOS). Only 14% of the patients could be included in the study. The PPOS showed the largest effect size (0.74) with a significant group effect (p<0.05). Specific alterations to the study design to ensure successful RCTs in this field are recommended.

Keywords: Feasibility studies, Parkinson disease, Patient selection, Physical therapy, Randomised controlled trials

a Department of Physiotherapy, Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), H0Q, P.O. Box 9600, 2300RC Leiden, The Netherlands

b Department of Neurology, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre (UMCN), Nijmegen, The Netherlands

c Department of Neurology, LUMC, The Netherlands

d Rehabilitation Research, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

e Department of Physiotherapy, Research Centre of Allied Health Care, UMCN, The Netherlands

Corresponding author. Tel.: +31715261514; fax: +31715266789.

PII: S1353-8020(06)00158-1

doi:10.1016/j.parkreldis.2006.07.007

8 of 12