engleski

Transcranial sonography in evaluation of patients with movement disorders

Standard neuroimaging methods, such as CT and MRI due to their low specificity and sensitivity are only limited use in patients suffering from Parkinson´s disease. while in healthy individuals and patients with essential tremor (ET)substantia nigra is barely visible, in patients with PD it shows an increase in echogenicity which is registered by transcranial sonography (TCS. Since there is no widely accepted test to help us confirm Parkinson ´s disease (PD) or essential tremor (ET), clinical examination of well-established symptoms is the still most accurate way of diagnosis. However, the misdiagnosis rates for PD and ET in the early stages is as high as 20-30% in PD and in about one of three patients in ET.We initiated this study to assess the usefulness of the transcranial sonography (TCS) in the evaluation and differential diagnosisof the patients with movement disorders by measuring substantia nigra.Our study was performed on 240 individuals, including 60 patients suffering frim ET, 120 PD patients, and a control group of 60 healthy subjects matched by age.Our study confirmed previous finding that SN hyperechogenicity in TCs is a highly specific finding of PD, which might help in confirming PD diagnosis in doubtful clinical cases or in zhe early stages of the disease when the motorsymptoms are not yet fully developed and might be overlaping with symptoms of ET.

transcranial sonography; movement disorders; Parkinson´s disease; essential tremor

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