Video-based long-term follow up of musician’s dystonia in pianists reveals similar improvements following different treatment strategies: a retrospective observational study

BACKGROUND: Musician’s Dystonia (MD) by impaired or complete loss of fine motor control in extensively trained movements at the instrument. In pianists, it frequently leads to involuntary flexion or extension of one or more fingers. Treatment remains challenging, although local injections with Botulinum toxin, anticholinergic medication and pedagogical retraining seem to be helpful in individual cases. Evaluation of therapies however is frequently hampered by lack of practicability, or validity. This retrospective observational study aims to assess the long-term development of MD and efficacy of therapies in keyboard players by means of a simple video-rating procedure by informed expert raters. METHODS: Video rating is characterisedwas done by 6 carefully instructed pianists, rating a total of 266 videos from 80 patients, recorded over a period of almost 20 years. These showed the affected hand playing a C-major scale as “regularly” as possible at a moderate tempo on a grand piano. Raters assessed the acoustic irregularity of scale playing and any visible movement impairment on visual analogue scales. Influence of patient-specific factors including applied treatment was estimated in a Bayesian multilevel beta regression. RESULTS: For ratings of irregularity and impairment intra-rater reliability was strong and inter-rater concordance was moderate. The average estimated improvement across all therapies was 14% in irregularity and 15% in impairment. Highest improvement rates in ratings of irregularity were found after the combined treatment with Botulinum toxin and Trihexyphenidyl (45%) as well as in retraining (29% improvement) as single therapy. In ratings of impairment the highest improvement was shown for retraining in combination with Trihexyphenidyl (36% improvement) as well as retraining as single therapy (23%). CONCLUSIONS: This study provides a new perspective on the course of MD in keyboard players in a larger cohort using methods other than self-report. Video rating of scale-playing was shown to be a reliable and useful method to evaluate MD in keyboard players. Average improvement rates were different to previous studies using patient-subjective questionnaires. Treatment options showed different effects in the two rating criteria, with retraining showing the highest improvement rates in single and combined use. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40734-021-00092-3.