Clinical experiences of the Japanese treatment guideline on Parkinson's disease

Abstract

The treatment guidelines are prepared for any medical workers to access easily when they need to help on a clinical practice. In contrast to the accessibility, the guidelines are compiled based on enormous amount of evidences. The current version of the Japanese treatment guideline on Parkinson's disease adopted the clinical question format and have achieved to supply clear and practical answers for users. By clearly providing its treatment alternatives, the guideline allows us to strategically identify appropriate treatment measures for individual patients in consideration for their QOL as well as ADL. In the meantime, a few problems are experienced in the clinical application of the guideline. Medications excessively depending on therapeutic recommendations according to the guideline policy might result in to be monotonous, as on the previous version of the guideline. Simultaneously, there are particular clinical settings in a clinical practice for which physicians cannot apply the recommendation by the guideline while they recognize the value of the guidelines for the best treatment options. Evidence-based therapeutic measures taking into account for patient-specific problems are important in the treatment of Parkinson's disease.