The effects of a specific executive training program on gait disturbance in patients with Parkinson's disease

Gait disorder can be considered as one of the main reasons of falls and injuries among patients with Parkinson’s disease. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of 8 weeks of specific executive training on gait difficulties in patients with Parkinson's disease.
The study followed a quasi-experimental design with a pre-test/post-test design and a control group. The participants were 14 patients with Parkinson's disease (mean age 60.21±10.92 years) with freezing of gait (2-5 Hohn and Yahr scale) who were selected through convenience sampling and were randomly assigned to experimental (4 males and 3 females) and control (5 males and 2 females) groups. The experimental group received an 8-week specific executive training together with pharmaceutical treatment. However, the control group received pharmaceutical treatment only. Freezing of Gait Questionnaire was used to collect data on gait disorder. Also, an independent t-test was run to analyze the collected data.
The results indicated that specific executive training had a significant effect on reducing gait disorder scores for the experimental group compared with that in the control group (p It can be concluded that specific executive training can be an appropriate training method to help improve freezing of gait in individuals with freezing of gait.