Electro-oculographic routine examination in Parkinson's disease.

The authors studied a group of 36 patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease by electro-oculographic examination in order to evaluate the most frequent vestibular and oculomotor findings. Vestibular alterations were detected mainly in caloric nystagmus (82.9%). Hyperreflectivity was the most frequent evidence, but it does not necessarily represent the sign of a lesion. The occurrence of spontaneous and evoked nystagmus was not significant. Oculomotor findings were more interesting, as they were altered in two-thirds of the cases. Particularly, saccadic eye movements presented a "multiple step" morphology in 58.3% of the series. This saccadic disarrangement was scarcely found in neurological patients with brainstem and/or cerebellum pathology (7.7%). Moreover, in Parkinson's disease patients no other saccadic alterations typical of brainstem or cerebellum involvement were found. Such observations suggest a possible non-cerebellar origin of "multiple step". Vestibular and oculomotor findings were not significantly correlated with the clinical features of the patients.