Prevalence of movement disorders in an elderly nursing home population.
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.
Tse
Winona
W
Department of Neurology, Mount Sinai Medical Center, One Gustave L. Levy Place, Box 1052, New York, NY 10029, USA. winona.tse@mssm.edu
Libow
Leslie S
LS
Neufeld
Richard
R
Lesser
Gerson
G
Frank
Judith
J
Dolan
Susan
S
Tarshish
Chaim
C
Gracies
Jean-Michel
JM
Olanow
C Warren
CW
Koller
William C
WC
Hälbig
Thomas D
TD
D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D020329:Essential Tremor / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009069:Movement Disorders / Q000145:classification / Q000453:epidemiology*; D009519:New York City / Q000453:epidemiology; D009735:Nursing Homes / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D015995:Prevalence; D012720:Severity of Illness Index