ABSTRACT
The emergence of effective symptomatic treatment during the past four decades has made a tremendous impact on the lives of individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD), providing them with an almost normal life expectancy1 and, for many, a reasonable quality of life. However, as described in other chapters in this text, the improvement afforded by the currently available pharmacological armamentarium is far from perfect. The combination of continued progression of PD and cumulative complications of medical treatment, particularly in the form of motor fluctuations and dyskinesia, eventually affects virtually all PD patients to some degree and poses significant difficulty for a distressing proportion of them.
