Speech Disorders In Parkinson’S Disease Patients With Mild Form Of Freezing Of Gait

Abstract

This paper deals with the description of speech disorders present in the mild stage of freezing of gait (FOG) in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Experimental dataset consisted of 48 PD patients and 52 healthy controls (HC). We used freezing of gait questionnaire (FOG-Q) to characterize FOG in PD. Using one-way analysis of variance, we found loosely adducted vocal folds during phonation (p = 0.0027), increased acoustic noise (p = 0.0294), reduced variability of pitch (p = 0.0440), and reduced mobility of articulatory organs (p = 0.0157) significantly statistically different in PD patients in comparison with HC.