No Thumbnail Available
The effects of specific over non-specific virtual reality in the treatment of people with Parkinson’s disease compared to traditional rehabilitation methods : a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Files
Freteur_Valentine_43871600Jamme_Maelle_33851600_2019-2020.pdf
UCLouvain restricted access - Adobe PDF
- 1.92 MB
Details
- Supervisors
- Faculty
- Degree label
- Abstract
- Objectives: The first objective of this meta-analysis was to study the effectiveness of a virtual reality rehabilitation program on balance, gait, quality of life and cognition in patients with Parkinson's disease compared to a classic functional treatment. The second objective was to compare commercially available recreational virtual reality tools (NSVR) with those specifically designed for rehabilitation (SVR). Method: The systematic review and meta-analysis based on RCTs drawn from four databases and selected according to the established PICO(s) criteria was carried out. Results: eighteen RCTs including 550 patients were selected. The results showed a significant improvement in the VR groups for all variables except cognition with a moderate effect on balance and quality of life and a good effect on gait. However, in most cases, this improvement was also demonstrated in the functional treatment group. Comparison of the two types of VR showed a significant improvement in both groups for balance and gait which was significantly higher for NSVR compared to SVR. For quality of life, only the NSVR group showed a significant improvement. The comparison of VR types could not be made for the cognitive variable due to the limited number of VR studies. Conclusion: The results showed an advantage of VR as a rehabilitation tool for Parkinson's disease on balance, gait and quality of life. However, the NSVR has proven to be more effective than the SVR, which is contrary to the hypothesis made at the beginning of this work. Moreover, SVR treatments validate fewer neurorehabilitation criteria than NSVR, which is very surprising and opens a great perspective for clinicians interested in the rehabilitation of these patients. Future research should focus on SVR systems that validate all or almost all neurorehabilitation criteria to take full advantage of the benefits of the technology to implement disease-specific protocols.