Guidance
This guideline covers diagnosing and managing Parkinson’s disease in adults over 20. It aims to improve care for people with Parkinson’s disease by promoting effective pharmacological therapy and surgical interventions, as well as other interventions that can help with individual symptoms.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- communication and providing information
- diagnosis
- pharmacological therapy in early and later Parkinson’s disease
- surgery
- non-motor features of Parkinson’s disease
- other key interventions, including physiotherapy and occupational therapy
- palliative care
Who is it for?
- Healthcare professionals
- Commissioners and providers
- Adults with suspected or confirmed Parkinson’s disease and their families and carers
Is this guideline up to date?
We reviewed the evidence in July 2011 and we are partially updating the guideline. The recommendations on pharmacological and non‑pharmacological management of symptoms, surgery and palliative care will be updated. Recommendations on several areas not covered by the original guideline will be added, including on dopamine patches, nutritional support, and providing information to people with Parkinson’s disease about impulse control disorder and pregnancy.
See the guideline in development page for progress on the update.
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
This guideline was previously called Parkinson's disease: diagnosis and management in primary and secondary care.
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or service users. The application of the recommendations in this guideline is not mandatory and the guideline does not override the responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or their carer or guardian.
Local commissioners and/or providers have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual health professionals and their patients or service users wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with compliance with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.