Parkinson's: Ways to Cope with Walking, Balancing, and Falling
The basis of a diagnosis
Neurologists base a Parkinson's diagnosis on medical history and examination. The examination includes:
- Complete and careful medical history.
- Blood pressure while sitting and standing.
- Cognitive skill assessments.
- Watching for unusual facial expressions, like no expression or "frozen face."
- Looking for tremors in your hands, arms, legs or face.
- Checking to see if there is stiffness in arms, legs, shoulders or torso.
- Determining if you can get up easily from a chair without using your arms.
- Check out your walking patterns.
- Assess balance when you stand.
Brain imaging is also useful if the diagnosis is suggestive of Parkinson’s disease. fMRIs or a specialized form of brain imaging that checks out brain function plus positron emission tomography (PET) can measure brain functions. These tools can help diagnosis Parkinson’s, and they are great research tools.
It would be nice if there were a standard blood test for the disease, but at this time there are no biological markers known to be in blood or other bodily fluids that confirm the diagnosis.
