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Treatment of cerebellar tremor

  • Chapter
Movement Disorders: Tremor

Abstract

The disorders of movement produced by cerebellar disease are complex (Holmes, 1939). They include dysmetria, dysdiadochokinesis and decomposition of movement as well as intention tremor. The combination is disabling, and clinical descriptions of patients with cerebellar disorders often do not distinguish between the various modalities, but content themselves with describing the whole disability as cerebellar ataxia. Observations of improvement with treatment often use the same approach, assessing the patient’s competence on a number of motor tasks and recording the performance in terms of the time taken to complete them. This is a valid means of assessing function, for it uses as a yardstick tasks similar to those that the patient has to carry out from day to day. It is not helpful, however, to an understanding of the pharmacology of an individual item such as tremor (see Fahn, this volume, chapter 5). Thus a review of the treatment of cerebellar tremor cannot be strictly that: it is a review of the treatment of cerebellar disorders, in which tremor plays a prominent but not a solo role.

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© 1984 N. J. Legg

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Legg, N.J. (1984). Treatment of cerebellar tremor. In: Findley, L.J., Capildeo, R. (eds) Movement Disorders: Tremor. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06757-2_28

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06757-2_28

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-06759-6

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