Effectiveness of Virtual Reality versus Conventional Exercise on Gait Training in Parkinson’s Disease: a literature review

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a degenerative process involving neurodegeneration in the substantia nigra with reduced dopamine production in the brain. Parkinson’s patients often experience gait disturbances that require physiotherapy intervention. Studies suggested that conventional exercises such as treadmills, graded resistance exercise, Nordic walking, and Dual-task training positively impact Parkinson’s patients with walking disorders. On the other hand, recent research showed that virtual reality improves walking problems in PD with a three-dimensional (3D) stimulation experience. Therefore, this research aims to compare the effectiveness of virtual reality with conventional exercise on gait training in Parkinson’s cases. In this literature review, as many as eight articles were filtered and reselected; the final selection was five. The results of the review found that four articles mentioned that the provision of virtual reality interventions was found more effective than conventional therapy in improving walking patterns, stride length, walking speed, freezing of gait (FoG), and gait in Parkinson’s Disease patients aged between 50 and 71 years old with an average background in European countries stages I-IV Hoehn and Yahr. However, virtual reality is less practical for patients with severe cognitive impairment. In addition, one article mentioned that conventional treadmill therapy coupled with musical beat cues and visual effects had the same effect. Based on these reviews, virtual reality is more effective than conventional therapy and results in faster improvement for Parkinson’s patients with walking problems.