How People with Parkinson's Disease Get Out of Bed

Abstract

Background and Purpose. Difficulty with bed mobility is reported by 66% of people with Parkinson's disease (PD). Our purpose was to describe movement patterns (MPs) used by individuals with PD for rising from the bed and the influence of physical therapy (PT) on these patterns. Subjects. Thirty-nine subjects, ages between 45 and 89, Hoehn and Yahr levels I-IV, participated. Methods. Subjects were videotaped rising from bed five times. MPs were categorized for each body part. Subjects' reports of previous bed mobility training was documented. Results. The most common MPs were “come to sit” for the axial region, “multipush” for the near arm, “double-push” for the far arm, and “synchronous” for the legs. People with PD are significantly more likely to lift their legs synchronously and significantly less likely to use the “roll off” strategy than older adults without PD. Nine (23%) subjects had been taught the “lateral roll.” Only three actually used it, and none of those three used it for every trial. Discussion and Conclusion. Further research is needed to investigate the motor control and flexibility demands of different strategies for getting out of bed and to determine why most people with PD do not use the “lateral roll” strategy taught by PT.

KEYWORDS:

• Bed mobility
• getting out of bed
• Parkinson's disease
• physical therapy
• movement patterns
• movement strategies
• rising from bed