Abstract—Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative
disease, which is affecting millions of people globally. One
common problem in PD patients are postural instability which
can lead to balance control impairment. PD patients’ postural
instability is currently one of the most difficult challenges the
physician encounters when treating the patients with this long
duration of disease. However, previous studies have shown that
exergaming is a popular treatment for improving balance of PD
patients. The purpose of this study was systematic review of
exergaming training intervention and outcomes of balance
among participants with PD. The search terms “exergaming,”
“exergames,” “balance,” “Parkinson’s disease” “Virtual
reality” and “Postural instability” were used in three electronic
databases, Science direct, Pubmed and Scopus. eleven studies
were systematically reviewed using the synthesis matrix. The
results indicated that the exergaming training group of PD
participants ranged from 1 to 76. The training duration and
frequency was between 20 minutes to 60 minutes, one to three
times a week, for a period of 6 to 12 weeks. In terms of research
methodology, most studies reviewed conducted randomized
controlled trial, while two studies administered
semi-experimental design and one study conducted single
subject experimental design. The results of these studies
indicated many benefits of exergaming training among PD
participants, such as, balance, gait, fatigue and postural
instability. In conclusion exergaming intervention is
recommended as postural stability treatment for PD
participants. This study may be used as a guide for future
reference when designing exergaming balance training for
future studies or rehabilitation application.
Index Terms—Postural stability, embodied learning theory,
virtual reality, Wii, Xbox.
Yu-Tai Wu is with the Department of Physical Education, National
Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan (e-mail: tarrywu2005@gmail.com).
Yu-Feng Wu is with the Graduate Institute of Sport, Leisure and
Hospitality Management, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan
(corresponding author; e-mail: garywu821822@gmail.com).
Jian-Hong Ye is with the Department of Industrial Education, National
Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan (e-mail: kimpo30107@yahoo.com.tw).
Cite: Yu-Tai Wu, Yu-Feng Wu, and Jian-Hong Ye, "Adults with Parkinson’s Disease Undergoes Exergaming Training to Improve Balance: A Systematic Review," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 146-153, 2020.
Copyright © 2020 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).