Effect Of Chair Based Tele-Rehabilitation Exercises On Activities Of Daily Living And Motor Components Using Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale In Parkinson’s Disease-A Case Study

Abstract

Background-Covid-19 pandemic has posed a great challenge for people with neurological disorders like Parkinson’s-disease to commute to treatment center due to risk of infection, unavailability of transport and most importantly to avail contact treatment commonly practiced in physiotherapy management of neurological patients. With the view of providing home-bound physiotherapy treatment for these patients, we speculated that safe balance intervention under expert supervision may prove beneficial improving their overall function. Thus, study was conducted in sitting using chair based Tele-rehabilitation. Aim: To study effect of chair-based Tele-rehabilitation on motor and functional components of unified Parkinson’s disease rating scale (UPDRS) in Parkinson’s patient. Objectives: To study effect of intervention on activities-of-daily-living and motor components. Methodology: A 70-year-old female patient complained of resting tremors in right hand and presented with difficulty in walking, imbalance and frequent episodes of fall. After multiple investigations including CT-brain, she has diagnosed with grade 3(Hoehn &Yahr scale) Parkinson’s disease. With medical management, the patient received 30-45 minutes/day, 3 days a week, 12-weeks chair-based exercises using zoom as Tele-medium focusing on stretching, flexibility, strengthening and postural-stability exercises. Baseline offline assessment on (UPDRS)outcome measure was done in September-2021 and post training assessment was done after 12 weeks on 30thDecember-2021. Results: Motor and Functional improvement was noted on UPDRS scale which included hand mobility, tremors, co-ordination, improvement in balance and gait(walking)pattern and patient could perform all functional activities such as dressing, sit-to-stand, log-rolling independently and reported no fall-episodes. Conclusion: Present study concludes that chair-based exercises using tele-rehabilitation provides a safe and highly beneficial alternative mode of rehabilitation especially for patients with Parkinson’s who have difficulty in commuting to treatment center and can be effectively prescribed to Parkinson’s patients to prevent frequent episodes of fall and to gain functional independence. KEY WORDS: Chair-based exercises, Tele-rehabilitation, Parkinson’s disease.