QUANTIF ICATION OF POSTURAL SWAY IN NORMALS AND PATIENTS WITH CEREBELLAR DISEASES n

This paper compares data from normals and 5 groups of cerebellar patients collected in an at-tempt to quantify and characterize their postural sway while standing erect. It extends and supple-ments earlier work by Dichgans et al. (1976) and Mauritz et al. (1979). The results largely confirm those of the previous authors, describing patterns of sway abnormality that are specific to a given localization of the disease within the cerebellum. New is the differentiation of spinal ataxia in Friedreich's ataxia from anterior lobe atrophies and vestibulo-spinal cerebellar diseases. This study also gives a statistical analysis of the diagnostic importance of single sway parameters. The 5 patient groups represent he most com-mon localizations of diseases causing cerebellar symptoms: (1) Friedreich's disease, which is proto-typical for a disorder of spino-cerebellar fferents, (2) atrophy of the anterior cerebellar lobe, the spino-cerebellum, to which spino-cerebellar ffer-ents mainly project, (3) the vestibulo-cerebellum forming the lower vermis, (4) the cerebellar hemi-spheres, and (5) diffuse cerebellar atrophies. The pattern of recorded abnormalities has been evaluated as to the significance of every pathologi-cal result for localizing the causal disease. As a consequence of this, posturography is now a valua-ble tool in clinical diagnosis and quantitative documentation of postural ataxia for follow-up studies