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. 2018 Jul;14(3):381-386.
doi: 10.3988/jcn.2018.14.3.381.

Hand Tremor Questionnaire: A Useful Screening Tool for Differentiating Patients with Hand Tremor between Parkinson's Disease and Essential Tremor

Kyum Yil Kwon  1 , Ho Sung Ryu  2 , Hye Mi Lee  3 , Mi Jung Kim  3 , Hae Won Shin  4 , Hee Kyung Park  5 , Sooyeoun You  6 , Young Hee Sung  7 , Sun Ju Chung  8 , Seong Beom Koh  9
Affiliations

Hand Tremor Questionnaire: A Useful Screening Tool for Differentiating Patients with Hand Tremor between Parkinson's Disease and Essential Tremor

Kyum Yil Kwon et al. J Clin Neurol. 2018 Jul.

Abstract

Background and purpose: Hand tremor is one of the most frequent symptoms in movement disorders, and differential diagnoses for hand tremor include Parkinson's disease (PD) and essential tremor (ET). However, accurately differentiating between PD and ET in clinical practice remains challenging in patients presenting with hand tremor. We investigated whether a questionnaire-based survey could be useful as a screening tool in patients with hand tremor.

Methods: A questionnaire related to hand tremor consisting of 12 items was prospectively applied to patients with PD or ET in three movement-disorder clinics. Each question was analyzed, and a query-based scoring system was evaluated for differentiating hand tremors between PD and ET.

Results: This study enrolled 24 patients with PD and 25 patients with ET. Nine of the 12 questions differed significantly between PD and ET: 1 about resting tremor, 4 questions about action tremor, and 4 about asymmetry. A receiver operating characteristics curve analysis revealed that the 9-item questionnaire showed a good discrimination ability, with a sensitivity of 88% and a specificity of 84%.

Conclusions: The developed Hand Tremor Questionnaire might be a good screening tool for hand tremors in patients with PD and ET.

Keywords: Hand Tremor Questionnaire; Parkinson's disease; essential tremor; hand; screening; tremor.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no financial conflicts of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1. ROC curve analysis to discriminate between Parkinson's disease and essential tremor: using 12 versus 9 questions. ROC: receiver operating characteristics.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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