Measurement of Rigidity in Elbow Joint: An Objective

One of the most known syndromes in Parkinson's disease is increased passive stiffness in body joints. At present, clinical measurement of stiffness in one of the upper extremity joints is an index used to evaluate the level of the illness. Subjective method currently used is called Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating System, UPDRS. The subjective nature of such method makes it open for influence of the physician himself. Hence, developing a standard method based on objective indices has always been of interest to researchers this research, using a newly fabricated device, viscous and elastic indices as the range of motion were measured during passive movement of elbow joint. Relation between each index and the level of illness was analyzed. Measurements were done for 41 patients and 11 controls. Research indices were extracted using Matlab-R14 software and statistic analyses were done using Spss-13. Results showed a better correlation for viscous index than the elastic one to the level of illness. Using the results of this research may lead to a standard objective method for evaluation of Parkinson's disease.