Overview

Innovations and advances in the field of PD — including evaluation, treatment, and prevention — continue to occur at a rapid pace, challenging both specialists and generalists to stay abreast of the changes, creating gaps in knowledge, competence, and practice among health care providers. In many cases, the data are not clear regarding the clinical implications. In turn, this creates a pressing need for educational activities focused on providing updates and critical analyses of both the pros and cons of the most recent advances in the care of patients with PD.

Learning Objectives

After completing this activity, the participant will be able to do the following:

• Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of digitaltechnology in the care of patients with Parkinson disease (PD) and its potential to replace or enhance clinic-based care.
• Describe the sensitivity and specificity of skin biopsies in detecting alpha synuclein pathology and the challenges to their use in the diagnosis of early PD.
• Summarize the key features of updated guidelines for initiating dopaminergic therapies, including personalized treatment goals, and the evidence for improved outcomes when following guideline recommendations.
• Recognize the odds for developing PD with presymptomatic identification of mutations in GBA and LRKK2, and identify the ethical issues that are inherent in presymptomatic testing.
• Realize the risk associated with genetic mutations and recognize the environmental factors and lifestyle choices that help to determine whether someone will get PD.
• Describe the treatment characteristics of available deviceassisted therapies and potential symptom improvement with such therapies, and discuss the motor and nonmotor profiles that would best be treated by either a rescue approach or by device-assisted nonoral therapies.
• Detail the clinician-reported scales used to measure outcomes in clinical trials of disease-modifying therapies in PD, how they are administered, and the strengths and limitations of such scales.
• Identify digital outcomes being considered and novel endpoints that may result from their implementation, and their potential to improve the reliability of measurements and the yield of success of clinical trials.
• List the agents that hold the most promise to reduce symptom burden in PD and the research describing their efficacy.
• Summarize the progress made in behavioral and nonmotor therapies for PD.
• List the options for short-acting rescue therapies in PD, their potential use as on-demand therapy, and their prospects as alternatives to device-assisted therapies to control motor fluctuations.

Target Audience

This educational activity is intended for neurologists, neurosurgeons, nurse practitioners, nurses, residents, fellows and other health care professionals who treat patients with Parkinson’s Disease.