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Background and aims. This study investigated the effect of Lee Silverman Voice Treatment® BIG (LSVT® BIG) on four major motor symptoms (tremor, rigidity, bradykinesia, and postural instability/gait disorder) in patients with Parkinson's disease classified as Hoehn and Yahr (HY) stages II-III. Methods. This retrospective, observational, single-center study included 17 patients with Parkinson's disease classified as HY stages II-III. To examine the effect of the LSVT® BIG, the total scores of the Movement Disorder Society-sponsored revision of the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (MDS-UPDRS) Part III and each score of the major motor symptoms (tremor, rigidity, bradykinesia, and postural instability/ gait disorder) extracted from the MDS-UPDRS Part III were assessed pre- and post-LSVT® BIG. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used for statistical analysis. Results. The total scores of MDS-UPDRS Part III, bradykinesia, and postural instability/gait disorder improved when comparing pre- and post-LSVT® BIG (median interquartile range: 24 16-36 to 18 13-22, 8 6-11 to 6 5-8, and 5 3-8 to 3 1-5, respectively). The tremor and rigidity scores showed a trend toward improvement but did not achieve statistical significance (median interquartile range: 4 0-6 to 3 0-5, and 4 2-10 to 4 2-6, respectively). Conclusions. These results suggest that LSVT® BIG for patients with Parkinson's disease classified as HY stages II-III is effective for improving bradykinesia and postural instability/gait disorder. The findings have important clinical implications for preliminarily estimating the effect of LSVT® BIG on each major motor symptom.
Iwai et al. (Wed,) studied this question.