Parkinson’s Disease Program

Mountainside Medical Center’s outpatient rehabilitation department offers four services in one convenient location, which includes:

• Physical therapy
• Occupational therapy
• Speech therapy
• Audiology

Our certified therapists work one on one with patients for the best possible results.

Diagnosing Parkinson’s with DaTscan

Making an accurate diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease can be difficult, which is why Mountainside Medical Center uses a variety of tools to help us isolate the right symptoms. One of those methods is DaTscan, which uses small amounts of a radioactive drug to light up dopamine transporters in the brain. DaTscan can be used to accurately differentiate Parkinson's from movement disorders.

Physical and Occupational Therapy

Exercise has many benefits for Parkinson’s patients, which makes physical therapy an essential part of treatment. For individuals with Parkinson’s disease, movements, such as gait and handwriting, become “smaller. Our physical therapy program provides:

LSVT BIG

This program is a high intensity program, held four times a week, lasting weeks. The program aims to improve posture and gait by increasing amplitude (size) of movements, functional mobility coordination and balance.

Traditional Physical Therapy

A less intense program with similar goals to LSVT Big. This program is held one to three times per week, tailored to each individual’s needs. This may include:

• Balance training to reduce risk for falls
• Stretching and flexibility exercises
• Strength Training
• Coordination exercises
• A home exercise program

Speech therapy

Your voice matters. That’s why we offer a variety of speech therapies to help our Parkinson’s disease patients better control their speech. This includes:

LSVT LOUD

This program trains people to use their voice at a more normal loudness level while speaking at home, work or in the community. Our two LSVT LOUD-certified specialists help people recalibrate their perceptions so they know how loud or soft they sound to other people and can feel comfortable using a stronger voice at a normal loudness level.

Speak Out!

This program helps Parkinson’s patients from developing a weak voice using education, individual speech therapy and ongoing group sessions.

Traditional speech therapy

For patients who are not able to perform the intensive exercises provided via LSVT LOUD and Speak Out, we also offer traditional speech therapy to target speech intelligibility using therapeutic exercises to target speech production.

Dysphagia and Swallowing

The team of speech-language pathologists at Mountainside medical center are skilled and trained in evaluations and treatments for dysphagia in patients with Parkinson’s. Clinical swallow evaluations and instrumental assessments (modified barium swallows) are performed for those with complaints of swallowing issues. These assessments assist with recommended therapeutic interventions for swallowing deficits, which may include:

• Diet modification
• Compensatory strategies for liquid and solid food intake
• Therapeutic exercises that target the muscles in the mouth and throat to improve swallowing abilities

Audiology

Parkinson’s patients may have a noticeable difficulty hearing at times. Our team recommends a complete hearing evaluation with an audiologist, so we can work with patients on how to best manage communication in the presence of Parkinson’s and hearing loss. This will also allow the speech language pathologist to build a therapy plan.

Learn more

To schedule an evaluation, contact our rehabilitation department 973-429-6011.