[New approach to gait disorders therapy in late stages of Parkinson's disease].

We conducted an open noncontrolled study of efficacy of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) combined with acetylcholinesterase inhibitor (galantamine) therapy in 30 Parkinson's disease patients with cognitive impairment and higher level of gait disorders. Galantamine dose gradually increase to maximum of 16 mg/day (8 weeks) before rTMSand after that we start rTMS for 10 consecutive days. Cognitive, neuropsychiatric and motor symptoms were assessed clinically at baseline and at end of 10 weeks combined therapy using the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE), Freezing Of Gait (FOG), Clinical Gait And Balance Scale (GABS), Tinetti scale, the clock drawing test, the Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB), PDQ-39 and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI).

New hybrid count- and geometry-based method for quantification of left ventricular volumes and ejection fraction from ECG-gated SPECT: methodology and validation.

Background: We have previously developed a new method for quantitative assessment of left ventricular (LV) volumes and ejection fraction (EF) from electrocardiography-gated single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). The aims of this study were to present the methodology, to validate the gated SPECT cardiac quantification (GSCQ) method in phantoms and patients, and to determine normal values of LVEF.

Methods And Results: A simple thresholding technique was used to generate binary images from nongated SPECT images.