The Effect of Rhythmic Auditory Cueing on Functional Gait Performance in Parkinson's Disease Patients

Abstract

Purpose: Parkinson’s disease is a progressive neurological movement disorder. Gait and its related dysfunctions cause a lot of disability to the patient. The common objective for all therapeutic intervention aims to preserve a patient’s independence and quality of life. There are established benefits of exercises to maintain functional independence including gait, prevent falls and decrease disease progression. External cueing such as rhythmic auditory cueing is a strategy that can be used in adjunct with traditional gait training intervention to facilitate movement, gait initiation and continuation. The external auditory cue training rerouted the movement through a non-automatic pathway, removing it from automatic basal ganglia pathway. There has been some evidence which suggests the positive effect of application of rhythmic auditory cueing on gait and balance performance of Parkinson’s patient, but it still remains ambiguous, hence, this study is planned to gather more evidence, on the effect of external auditory cues on gait performance in Parkinson’s disease patients. Aim: To study the effects of rhythmic auditory cueing on functional gait performance in individuals diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Objectives: To assess and compare the effect of conventional rehabilitation exercises combined with rhythmic auditory cueing and conventional rehabilitation exercises on functional gait performance using freezing of gait questionnaire(FOGQ), modified gait efficacy scale(MGES) and figure of eight walk test(FO8WT) in Parkinson’s disease patients. METHOD- Prospective randomized controlled trial. Results: The study results show that there is a significant improvement in functional gait performance in Parkinson’s disease patients after auditory cueing reflected by the significant p values of respective tests. Conclusion: The above study concludes that application of rhythmic auditory cueing has beneficial effects on the functional gait performance primarily on freezing of gait, MGES and the time component of FO8WT in Parkinson’s disease patients.