Falls self-management interventions for people with Parkinson’s: a systematic review

Abstract

Falls are common in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Increased involvement of people with Parkinson’s (PwP) in their care has been associated with enhanced satisfaction. Self-management programmes in other long-term conditions (LTCs) have led to improvements in physical and psychological outcomes. These have been more effective when targeted toward a specific behavior.

Objective: this paper aimed to identify and review falls self-management interventions for PwP.

Methods: a systematic review was conducted. Electronic databases were searched in June 2018. Primary research studies (any design) reporting the delivery of falls self-management interventions to PwP were included. Data was extracted from each article and synthesised narratively.

Results: six articles were identified, relating to five different self-management interventions. All described a self-management intervention delivered alongside physiotherapy. Intervention delivery was through either group discussion (n=3) or falls booklets (n=3). Interventions were often incompletely described; the most common components were information about the condition, training/ rehearsal for psychological strategies and lifestyle advice and support. Arising from the design of articles included the effects of self-management and physiotherapy could not be separated. Three articles measured falls, only one led to a reduction. Four articles measured quality of life, only one led to improvement. No articles assessed skill acquisition or adherence to the self-management intervention.

Conclusions: few falls self-management interventions for PwP have been evaluated and reported. The components of an effective intervention remain unclear. Given the benefits of self-management interventions in other LTCs, it is important that falls self-management interventions are developed and evaluated to support PwP.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Kinda Ibrahim: orcid.org/0000-0001-5709-3867

ORCID for Laura Dennison: orcid.org/0000-0003-0122-6610

ORCID for Helen Roberts: orcid.org/0000-0002-5291-1880

Catalogue record

Export record

Altmetrics