BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Parkinson disease is a neurodegenerative disease that affects people who suffer in a different way. Some of the main motor symptoms are tremors, muscle stiffness, walking abnormalities, postural disruptions, and slowness of movement; such as an “OFF” state of the body or freezing conditions before, during and after walking.

As the disease progresses, symptoms of Parkinson's disease may begin to interfere with daily activities. Affected people may not be able to hold the cutlery firmly or they may find that the tremor makes it difficult to read the newspaper or ingest their food. People with Parkinson's disease often develop the so-called Parkinsonian walking that includes a tendency to lean forward, taking small quick steps, such as hasty, this postural instability, or deterioration of balance, makes the affected people fall easily causing serious injuries. Another symptom that they also experience is a reduction of movement in one or both arms because the muscles remain constantly tense and contracted, people who suffer from stiffness constantly feel pain when trying to move their limbs.

The “Freezing” is described by the patients as the feeling of having their feet stuck to the ground. Patients with this symptom may have problems initiating movement and can suddenly stop when they walk (they become “Frozen”). This condition causes a large number of falls.

The slowness in their movements is particularly frustrating because it can make the simple tasks become difficult. The person cannot quickly perform routine movements. The activities the patients used to do quickly and easily, such as grooming themselves or getting dressed, can take much longer.

According to the state of the art of the utility model No 3590, which mentions a device that generates modulated vibrations and decreases the symptom of the Freezing during the Parkinson's patients way of walking, our invention, aimed to be protected, claims the development of an improvement over the aforementioned device. The improvements made to the utility model No 3590 were able to decrease symptoms, such as tremor in the upper limbs, muscular stiffness, bradykinesia or slowness in movements, postural disruptions, Parkinsonian walking and freezing gait as well. The improvements made to such device will be explained below.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The device according to the invention produces vibration through a micro-motor that is powered by a handheld electric energy source (a battery), wherein the vibration produced may be modulated in time, speed and power.

Vibration helps Parkinson's patient to re-make walking and to make natural movements in case of suffering a Freezing episode, this device makes the body to work on a human-like reflects-basis, so that the vibration wakes up the body, taking the user out of a blocking state, caused by the so called Freezing.

The vibration generated by the micro motor in addition to reducing the Freezing helps to reduce and counteract the tremors in the hand that occur when the patient is resting or moving. Another benefit we obtain with the use of vibrations is the patient's posture improvement; thus, reducing patient's back and neck curving, improving and achieving the body balance increase, keeping a stable gravity center.

With the vibrations generated by the device, we managed to reduce the muscular stiffness caused by Parkinson's disease, obtaining an increase in the ranges of movement. Movements slowness or bradykinesia are reduced considerably with the use of vibrations; we managed that patients move with a considerable motor speed increase in their bodies. Likewise, with the use of vibrations, the Parkinsonian walking was reduced, the patients improved their strides and bracing when walking, as well as reducing the percentage of falls caused by this symptom.

To complete such device operation and to better obtain results, we placed a laser guide which is powered by a handheld energy source (battery), which creates a light that is projected linearly on the ground, this guide is known as the visual guide. The light projected on the floor serves to generate a sensory stimulus that helps to remove the patients from the blockade caused by the Freezing diminishing a large percentage of injuries caused by falls.

The patient should place the device on the body so that the vibrating motor is in contact with her/his skin, this in order for the user to feel the vibrations that have been programmed by the Physician, this depends on the treatment and the scope wanted to be obtained.

The laser light should always point to the floor to make the light projecting properly and producing the line effect we require. We have put a Bluetooth module in order to maintain communication between our device and an intelligent device (smartphone, computer, tablet or smart band).

Details and characteristic of this device are clearly shown in the following description and in the accompanying drawings.

