• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.15-20
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• 2016

Essential tremor is a neurological disorder with a tremor of the arms and hands. It is well known that essential tremor is characterized by the postural tremor and the action tremor. There has been no report on the quantitative difference in the characteristics of two tremor types. The purpose of this study was to investigate the possible difference in tremor characteristics of postural and action tremors. Seventeen patients with essential tremor ($68.9{\pm}7.9years$, 7 men, 10 women) participated in this study. Patients performed the tasks of postural maintenance (arms outstretched) and daily actions (spiral drawing). Three-axes (pitch, roll and yaw) gyro sensors were attached on index finger, back of hand and forearm, from which the segment and the joint angular velocities were calculated. Outcome measure was the tremor amplitude defined as the root-mean-square mean of the vector-sum angular velocity at segments and joints. Two-way ANOVA showed that task and joint had main factor on the tremor amplitude (p < 0.05). Post-hoc analysis revealed that tremor amplitude at the metacarpo-phalangeal joint was not affected by task (p > 0.05). However, tremor amplitude at the wrist joint differed among the tasks (p < 0.05), and it was greater in the action tasks than in postural task. Tremor was greater at finger segments than at hand and forearm and it increased in action tasks. The results of this study would be helpful for the understanding and task-specific treatments of the essential tremor.

• Journal of Haehwa Medicine
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.281-288
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• 2007

Tremor is a rhythmic, involuntary muscular contraction characterized by oscillations (to-and-fro movements) of a part of the body. Essential tremor is a 6-8 Hz tremor that is of variable amplitude. It is aggravated by posture and movement and relieved by rest and alcohol. Most affected part are the arms, head and vocal apparatus. The purpose of this study is to show a case of tremor patient with essential tremor improved by oriental medical treatment. The patient was 71-year-old woman who featured essential tremor and at the same time complained general body weakness, nausea, and anorexia. She was treated by oriental medicine with acupuncture, herb medication, and Korean psychotherapy; Eejeong-byunki, Jiun-goron. The features of essential tremor was reduced after taking oriental medical therapy. This result suggested that the oriental medical therapy can be effective for treating essential tremor.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.325-328
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• 2005

Objective: Stereotactic thalamic procedure is well known to be a effective treatment for disabling upper limb tremor of essential tremor. However, the effect of this procedure for head tremor, which is midline symptom of that disease entity, has not been sufficiently established. The authors discuss the result of stereotactic thalamic operations for head tremor of their patients who suffered from essential tremor. Methods: We evaluated 4 patients of essential tremor who had head tremor combined with both upper limb tremor. One patient underwent unilateral ventralis intermedius thalamotomy, two patients had unilateral Vim deep brain stimulation(DBS) and one patient had unilateral Vim thalamotomy and contralateral DBS. Postoperative results of tremor were evaluated using our proposed scale. Results: Contralateral upper limb tremors to surgical side were markedly resolved in all patients but there was no meaningful effect for head tremor in 3 patients who underwent unilateral thalamic surgery. In a patient having simultaneously unilateral thalamotomy and contralateral DBS, remarkable improvement of head tremor was observed. Conclusion: Although it is difficult to evaluate the efficacy of thalamic surgery for axial symptom of essential tremor with a few cases, simultaneous unilateral thalamotomy and contralateral DBS would be expected to induce favorable outcomes for head tremor with significant economical advantages.

• Journal of Sasang Constitutional Medicine
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.254-263
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• 2013

Objectives The Purpose of this case is to report that a Taeeumin patient diagnosed as essential tremor was treated with Melonis Pedicelus and then patient's symptoms improved. Methods We prescribed Melonis Pedicelus for patient's physical symptoms. The improvement of the patient's essential tremor was evaluated. Results After the Melonis Pedicelus was given, the patient's Essential tremor and physical symptoms were improved. Conclusions This case study showed an efficient result of using Melonis Pedicelus in the essential tremor of Taeeumin.

• The Journal of Pediatrics of Korean Medicine
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2013

Objectives This clinical study was aimed to examine the effects of herbal medicine and acupuncture on early onset - essential tremor and report on the therapeutic progress. Methods Herbal medication (Kamiyangsintang) and acupuncture were used for treatment. Also, VAS scale were used to check the improvement. Results The hands tremor was relieved during 4 months of treatment. However, the symptom was aggravated after one and a half years. The patient has shown improvement after retreatment. Conclusions This study showed that child patient diagnosed with essential tremor who received Kamiyangsintang and acupuncture treatments was improved. However, it also can be aggravated depending on the patients and their body condition. More cases and long-term observation in relation to early onset of tremor are required.

• Journal of Acupuncture Research
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.123-131
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• 2010

Objectives : The purpose of these case is to observe the effect of prescription of liver supplementation on essential tremor patient who was operated DBS. Methods : The patient was treated by prescription of liver supplementation. The improvement of patient was judged by tremor scale and VAS(visual analog scale). Results : After treatment patient's tremor scale grade and VAS score were generally decreased. Conclusions : The prescription of liver supplementation might be an effective method to treat the essential tremor patient who was operated DBS.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.103-108
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• 2015

Discrimination of Parkinson's disease (PD) from Essential tremor (ET) is often misdiagnosed in clinical practice. Since tremor is time-varying signal, and dominant and harmonic frequencies are shown in tremor only with moderate or severe symptom, there are some limitations to use frequency related features. Moreover, patients with PD or ET can suffer from both resting tremor and postural tremor. In this study, 28 patients with PD and 17 patients with ET were enrolled. Tremor was measured with accelerations on the more affected hand during resting and postural conditions. The ratio of root mean square (RMS) of resting tremor to RMS of postural tremor, the mean coefficients of autocorrelation function (ACF), and the mean of differences of two adjacent coefficients of ACF at resting and postural were calculated and compared between PD and ET. The performance showed 98% accuracy with support vector machine and leave-one-out cross validation. In addition, the method accurately differentiated the patients with tremor-dominant PD from patients with ET, with 100% accuracy. Therefore, the developed algorithm can assist clinicians in diagnosing and categorizing patients with tremor, especially, patients with mild symptom or the early stage of a disease, for proper treatment.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.1044-1049
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to study clinical characteristics of patients complained of tremor and to evaluate availability of oriental medical treatment. This observation was made on 36 cases that were hospitalized in the Semyung University Oriental Medicine Hospital and evaluated tremor using clinical rating tremor scale(CRTS). The ratio of patients were essential tremor(50%), parkinson's disease(13.9%), psychogenic tremor(13.9%), physiologic tremor(11.1%), cerebellar tremor(11.1%). CRTS score of essential tremor patients decreased significantly. Physiologic tremor patients's CRTS score were under 15 points. Every patient's scores decreased. Two patients's score decreased to 0 point. Every patient were treated with Bojungikki-tang-gamibang. CRTS scores of psychogenic tremor patients were various.(4~24 points) Two patients's scores decreased to 0 point. The CRTS scores of three cases among four patients with cerebellar tremor were not changed. Changes of CRTS score between oriental medication group and western-oriental combined medication group were statistically significant. Changes of CRTS score between over 15 points group and under 15 points group were statistically significant. Kejigayongolmoryo-tang was one of the most widely used herbal medication, which was diagnosed as ascendant hyperactivity of liver yang.

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.717-731
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• 2018

Objectives: The purpose of this research is to investigate clinical studies of essential tremor in China. Methods: We investigated clinical studies of Traditional Chinese Medicine therapies in traditional Chinese medical journals for essential tremor through the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database. In total, 15 clinical articles were analyzed. This study examined the authors; published years; types of study; treatment methods for the treatment and control groups; periods; outcome assessment; and results. Results: Nine articles used acupuncture, 6 articles used herbal therapy. The most commonly used acupoints were GV20, GB20, LR3, LI4, GB34, SP6, and EX-HN1. The most commonly used herbs were Paeoniae Radix Alba, Angelicae Gigantis Radix, Cnidii Rhizoma, Gastrodiae Rhizome and Uncariae Ramulus et Uncus. Total effective rate was 66.67-96.7%; the treatment group values were significantly higher than the control group values in all papers. Tremor score, HAMD, curative effect of TCM syndrome, and incidence of adverse effects were significantly more affected in the treatment group than in the control group. Conclusion: More active clinical studies are needed on essential tremor, and the results of this study can be used as a basis for future research.

• Annals of Clinical Neurophysiology
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.7-12
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• 2005

Background: Essential tremor (ET) is a common movement disorder that often causes functional disability. There have been very few investigations about the clinical characteristics of ET in Korea. Therefore, we performed a study showing the clinical features and electrophysiological findings of ET. Methods: We analyzed medical records and accelerometry data of 152 patients (male vs female; 79 vs 73) with ET, who visited the Neurology Clinic of Hospital from 2000 to 2003. Clinical characteristics of ET were summarized including the age of onset, family history, tremor type, body part involved, and associated symptoms. The frequency of tremor was recorded and the spectral analysis of tremor was performed. Results: The age of tremor onset showed bimodal distribution with peaks in the 2nd and 5th decades. Family history was found in 46 patients (30.3%). The patients with the family history presented earlier onset of tremor than patients without the history (mean age of onset, y: 35.2 vs. 49.9, P < 0.001). Tremor appeared most frequently in hands (94%), and followed by head (25%). In head tremor, "no-no" pattern was mainly observed and the head tremor was more frequently observed in female. The frequency of tremor was negatively correlated with age (r=-0.49, P<0.001). Conclusions: The present study indicated some important findings about ET: (1) bimodal distribution for an age of onset, (2) younger age of onset in patients with a family history, (3) decreasing frequency of the tremor according to age, and (4) higher prevalence of head tremor in female patients.