Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Patients with Parkinson's Disease from the Perspective of Treating Physicians-A Nationwide Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed challenges to maintaining medical care for patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). The Parkinson's Disease during the COVID-19 Pandemic (ParCoPa) survey was conducted as an online, nationwide, cross-sectional survey from December 2020 to March 2021 and aimed to assess the impact of the pandemic on the medical care of PD patients from the physicians' perspective. Invitations containing a randomly generated registration code were mailed to healthcare professionals from sixty-seven specialty centers in Germany. Confounders for the worsening of subjective treatment quality, perceived health risk due to the profession, and adequate protective measures against SARS-CoV-2 were assessed using logistic regression analysis. Of all forty physicians who responded, 87.5% reported a worsening of motor and nonmotor symptoms in their patients, 97.5% experienced cancellation of appointments, and difficulties in organizing advanced and supplementary therapies were reported by over 95%. Participants offered alternative consultation options, mostly in the form of telephone (77.5%) or online (64.1%) consultations, but telephone consultations were the most accepted by patients ("broadly accepted", 40.0%). We identified pandemic-related deficits in providing care for patients with PD and areas of improvement to ensure continued care for this vulnerable patient population.

Keywords: COVID-19; Parkinson’s disease; provision of care; telemedicine.

Figure 1

(A) Change in medical care quality compared to prepandemic period. (B) Change in subjective treatment quality compared to prepandemic period. (C) Cancellation of appointments by physician or patient. (D) Difficulties physicians faced in scheduling therapies for PD patients. DBS, deep brain stimulation. (E) Change in the overall symptom burden. (F) Change in motor and non-motor symptoms observed by study participants. (G) The implementation of hygiene concepts required additional effort from physicians. (H) Financial impact physicians faced since pandemic onset. (J) Additional expenditures for physicians during the pandemic.