Introduction Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an effective treatment for patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). On time follow-up and timely programing of symptoms are important measures to maintain the effectiveness of DBS. Due to the highly contagious nature of 2019-nCoV, patients were quarantined. With the help of Internet technologies, we continued to provide motor and non-motor symptom assessment and remote programming services for postsurgical PD-DBS patients during this extraordinary period. Methods A retrospective analysis was performed on postsurgical PD-DBS patients who could not come to our hospital for programming due to the impact of the 2019-nCoV. The differences between the pre- and post-programming groups were analyzed. We designed a 5-level Likert rating scale to evaluate the effects and convenience of the remote programming and Internet self-evaluation procedures. Results Of the 36 patients engaged in the remote programming, 32 patients met the inclusion criteria. Four of the 32 patients set initiated stimulation parameters, and the other 28 patients had significant improvement in UPDRS-III. Nearly all the 28 patients were satisfied with the effect of the remote programming. Most of the patients were willing to use remote programming again. Conclusion Remote programming based on the online evaluation of patient’s symptoms can help improve motor symptoms of postsurgical DBS patients with PD during the quarantine period caused by 2019-nCoV. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s00415-020-10273-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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