Publications by authors named "H Ruottinen"
Background: The symptoms and their progression in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) are typically studied after the diagnosis has been confirmed. However, many people with ALS already have severe dysarthria and loss of adequate speech at the time of diagnosis. Speech-and-language therapy interventions should be targeted timely based on communicative need in ALS.
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- - The study examined cranial nerve symptoms and communication effectiveness in 30 Finnish patients with diagnosed or suspected amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) during their initial visit to a speech-language pathologist.
- - Results indicated that participants with suspected ALS experienced greater deterioration in soft palate function and had a slower speech rate compared to those with diagnosed ALS, highlighting differences in communicative effectiveness between the two groups.
- - The findings suggest that patients with bulbar-onset ALS, particularly those in the suspected category, are at risk for diagnostic delays, emphasizing the need for early speech therapy interventions as soon as bulbar symptoms present.
The treatment of Parkinson's disease may be initiated with dopamine agonist or MAO-B-inhibitor for people under 60-65 years of age. For older patients, the treatment may also be started with levodopa. If there are motor complications, such as on-off-symptoms, apomorphin injections can be beneficial in addition to other medications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Few of the structural changes caused by Parkinson's disease (PD) are visible in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with visual inspection but there is a need for a method capable of observing the changes beyond the human eye. Texture analysis offers a technique that enables the quantification of the image gray-level patterns.
Purpose: To investigate the value of quantitative image texture analysis method in diagnosis and follow-up of PD patients.
Rationale And Objectives: The aim of this study was to examine changes of brain iron content and diffusion patterns longitudinally in early-stage Parkinson's disease (PD) patients using T2- and T2*-based magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) over 2-year follow-up.
Materials And Methods: We imaged 32 PD patients with tremor and 19 healthy controls. A follow-up study (median 25 months, range 22-31 months) was accomplished for 25 patients (men:women = 11:14; age range 44-87 years, median 73 years).