What is Parkinson's Disease?

Parkinson’s disease is a progressive and fluctuating neurological condition affecting movements, such as walking and dexterity. Dopamine is a chemical messenger that transmits messages between nerve cells and muscles, and the disease occurs when dopamine cells degenerate. The cause of the depletion of dopamine cells is currently unknown and therefore treatment can only be given to manage the symptoms.

Our Service

The Regional Parkinson’s Disease Service is run by Neurologists and specialist nurses with expertise and experience in managing the condition. We are a large clinical trials and research unit with links to Newcastle University, which means that our patients can be offered the opportunity to try potential new therapies for their conditions and may often be the first to benefit from ground-breaking new treatments.

We treat patients from young-onset Parkinson’s Disease through to more advanced, complex stages of the disease. As a regional centre, we offer more specialised forms of treatment, such as deep brain stimulation surgery, as well as standard medication therapies. Your treatment will depend on your individual symptoms and stage of the disease. Your neurologist or nurse specialist will discuss with you the options available to help meet your individual needs.

Specialist advice and support where and when you need it

We run new patient clinics where we diagnose Parkinson’s Disease and Atypical Parkinsonism. Our range of specialised investigations to aid diagnosis, includes:

• DaT scans: performed in the Medical Physics department. The purpose of this scan is to aid accurate diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease by looking at the function of the dopamine system
• CT / MRI scans: used to differentiate Parkinson’s disease from other forms of Parkinsonism

Our specialist nurses run dedicated clinics to allow you to discuss any concerns you may have regarding management of your symptoms or your medication, to enable you to maximise your quality of life. In addition to face-to-face clinics we offer a telephone helpline as well as links to associations and support groups in the local community.

More information

If you would like to you to find out more, please contact:

Tricia McGee, Una Brechany, Sharon Reading & Elaine Vandriwala

Parkinson's Disease Specialist Nurses

Telephone:  (0191) 282 3282