New Technologies in the Rehabilitation of Patients with Parkinson's Disease: a Narrative ‎Review

Parkinson's disease is a progressive neurological disorder that causes motor and behavioral symptoms. So far, no medicine has been discovered for definitive treatment, and physicians prescribe rehabilitation to improve movement disorders along with drug treatment. In the movement rehabilitation method, the patients do the exercises specified by the therapist. Exercise can improve daily life tasks and lead to less dependency on caregivers. However, over time, patients get bored and rarely participate in rehabilitation programs due to the repetitive, non-motivating, or difficulty of regular programs. The advancement of technology and integration in traditional rehabilitation is a promising option in the rehabilitation of Parkinson's patients. In this review, a brief overview of tec-hnological progress in the field of neurological and motor rehabilitation of patients with Parkinson's disease has been made and the role of virtual reality, Wii, Kinect, tablets, and robots have been discussed.

The present study is a narrative review. Scientific databases including PubMed and Google Scholar were searched based on the keywords ‘rehabilitation’, ‘Parkinson's disease’, ‘virtual reality’, ‘robot’, and ‘tablet’ between 2000 and 2022. Also, the medical informatics and physiotherapy experts’ opinions were used to complete the topics.

Among the sources found by removing duplicates and reading the full text, 38 sources met the desired entry criteria for use in the present study. A combination of the results of articles and the experts’ opinions, showed that using new technologies including virtual reality, Wii, Kinect, tablets, and robots in the rehabilitation of people with Parkinson's disease can lead to greater improvement in motor function compared to conventional rehabilitation.

The results showed that despite the challenges in using new technologies to rehabilitate patients with Parkinson's disease, they can lead to significant improvement in motor function and individual independency compared to conventional rehabilitation in patients with Parkinson's disease.