Determination of BAEP and VEP in patients with Parkinson disease

Aim: To study whether brain stem auditory and visual passageway are impaired in patients with Parkinson disease(PD).Methods: A total of 32 patients with PD and 30 patients with non-neurological disease were selected. The Reporter type-4 channels evoked potential machine (Italy) was used to check brainstem auditory evoked potential(BAEP) and visual evoked potential(VEP). Indexes of BAEP including peak latency(PL) of waves Ⅰ, Ⅲ, Ⅴ and inter-peak latency (IPL) of waves Ⅰ-Ⅲ, Ⅲ-Ⅴ, Ⅰ-Ⅴ and the indexes of VEP (P100PL) were determined.Results:BAEP: the abnormal rate of the PD patients was 50%. PL of wave Ⅲ and wave V was 22% and 19%, respectively. The wave Ⅲ PL ((3.87±0.30) ms) and wave V PL ((5.79±0.30) ms) of the PD patients were different from those in the control group ((3.56±0.22) ms, (5.48±0.26) ms,t=5.83,5.85, P〈0.01). VEP: the P100PL of the PD patients was higher than that in the control group ((105.17±12.42) ms, (98.62±9.46) ms,t=2.49, P〈0.05).Conclusion: There are brain stem auditory and visual pathway impairment in PD patients except for substantianigra-striatum lesion. BAEP and VEP can be taken as sensitive and objective indicators for clinical evaluation of PD.