Category: Allied Healthcare Professionals
Objective: Characterization of in-hospital observation requests for movement disorders specialty.
Background: The increasing prevalence of movement disorders may lead to high patient referral for movement disorders observations. Taking this into account it´s important to analyse the reasons for referral and the medical specialties that most frequently request these evaluations.
Method: Observational study considering 50 movement disorders speciality requests carried out in Centro Hospitalar de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Vila Real, Portugal, from 01.06.2021 to 31.12.2022, considering: requesting medical specialties, reason for observation, complementary investigation carried out, medical treatment introduced and pre-existing neurological comorbidities.
Results: Fifty requests were evaluated corresponding to 50 patients with a mean age of 70,80 years (30-90), 52% were woman. Most observations requests came from the general neurology within the scope of clinical activity performed in the emergency department, corresponding to 44% of the cases. The other medical specialties that also requested observation were internal medicine (n=5), cardiology (n=4) and oncology (n=4). The most frequent reasons for referral were: tremor (22), parkinsonism (9), Parkinson’s disease (5), tremor and gait disorder (3), bradykinesia and gait disorder (2) and cerebellar syndrome (2). Most tremor request were unspecified (36%) or were hand tremor (32%). Half of the patients didn´t performed any complementary investigation. 52% of patients had a neuroimage study (CT or RMN). No therapy was prescribed in 66% of cases. Nine patients started levodopa and four patients started clonazepam. In 11 patients a pre-existing neurological disease was identified, namely stroke (3) or dementia (2).
Conclusion: A reflection on the reasons for referral to an observation on movement disorders clinic should promote an in-hospital knowledge on movement disorders.
To cite this abstract in AMA style:
AG. Velon, AJ. Marques, A. Costa, C. Borges, C. Azoia, R. Raimundo. Referral for movement disorder specialists within a central hospital [abstract]. Mov Disord. 2022; 37 (suppl 2). https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/referral-for-movement-disorder-specialists-within-a-central-hospital/. Accessed May 25, 2025.« Back to 2022 International Congress
MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/referral-for-movement-disorder-specialists-within-a-central-hospital/