Objective: 

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegeneratif disorder of central nervous system. It results from the death of dopaminergic cells in the substantia nigra, a region of the midbrain. However, there are limited studies evaluating the volume of brain regions and its relation to the PD's findings. In the present study we estimated the volume of hemispheres, cerebellum and brain stem and we evaluated the relation between the volume and features of the disease

Methods: 

T1 weighted magnetic resonance images of the patients and clinical findings were obtained retrospectively. The volumes of right and left hemispheres, cerebellum and brain stem were estimated stereologically. The relation between the volume data and clinical findings were statistically analyzed

Results: 

Our results showed that the volume of right and left hemispheres, cerebellum and brain stem were 548.6, 554.2, 143.6 and 24.2cm3, respectively. Patients stages was changing from 1.5 to 5 and most of them were in stage 2.5 (43.5%). There was correlation between the volume and stage of the disease (r=0.441, p?0.05). There were no correlation between the clinical signs and volumetric data (p?0.05).

Conclusions: 

Our data revealed the volume of brain stem was higher in the patients with high score of disease. We will discuss the finding on the basis of available literature. Additionally, stereological methods could be used for the evaluation of PD images.