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What Happens After You Suspect Parkinson's Disease?

You notice that you have some of the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. Maybe you drool at night, or you have noticed that occasionally while you are at rest your hand or finger trembles. You are concerned, so you make an appointment with your doctor. What happens next?

Your doctor will take a complete medical history including a list of all of your symptoms, when you noticed them, how long you have had the symptoms and the severity of the symptoms. The doctor will perform an examination to check your general health and to begin to rule out other conditions that may have the same symptoms. There are no tests that your doctor can run to determine if you have Parkinson's disease. The doctor can run tests in order to rule out other disease though. These tests may be blood or urine tests, or even x-rays and MRIs. The doctor may even run specialized tests such as SPECT or PET scans to help support the diagnosis. The scans are designed to identify dopamine deficiency, which is a hallmark of Parkinson's disease. These tests are not always available though.

Since your doctor will be ruling out other diseases or conditions that have similar symptoms to the ones that you may have experienced; you may wonder what other diseases or conditions that your doctor may be ruling out? Other diseases or conditions that doctors tend to rule out when the patient suspects that he/she has Parkinson's are corticobasal degeneration, multiple systems atrophy, progressive supranuclear palsy, and also pseudo-parkinsonism. When tremors occur during activity instead of at rest it is known as essential tremor (ET). With Parkinson's disease the tremor occurs while at rest and disappears if the limb, hand or feet are made active.

Perhaps one of the more common questions after the diagnosis is made is, "How does Parkinson's progress?" The symptoms typically start out slow and even may go unnoticed by the individual or the individual's family. Stiffness of fingers, hands, or shoulder or mild tremors may be among the first symptoms to be noticed. The individual may experience pain. The symptoms will normally affect only one side of the body for perhaps one or two years and then the disease will slowly spread to the other side of the body. Even though the tremor is a common first sign of Parkinson's approximately 30% of all Parkinson's patients say that they did not have tremors as one of their first signs of the disease.

Once Parkinson's has been suspected or diagnosed the individual should be followed by a neurologist or a specialist dealing with Parkinson's disease so that the individual receives the very best treatment.