The Prevalence of Essential Tremor in Turkish Medical Students

Objectives: To determine the clinical findings and prevalence of essential tremor (ET) in Turkish Medical Students.Background: The prevalence of ET is higher than other movement disorders and its prevalence ranges from 0.4 to 3.9 % worldwide and the age of onset of essential tremor is unclear. In previous studies a bimodal distribution in age of onset with peaks in the second and sixth decades of life has been reported.Patients and methods: Two hundred twenty-one medical school students from the Afyon Kocatepe University School of Medicine, aged 17 – 26 years, were included in this study. The study was planned in two phases. In phase 1, a short questionnaire including screening questions for tremor was administered to the subjects. In phase 2; suspected subjects were evaluated according to the scales for tremor by a neurology specialist and a final diagnosis was made.Results: In Phase 1; 24 subjects (10.8 %) were screened as positive and were referred to phase 2. All of the tremor positive students were evaluated by direct examination. A diagnosis of ET was made in 6 subjects (2.7 %).Conclusions: In this study, we demonstrated the ET prevalence and anatomic distribution in a selected young population with the same level of education and similar age interval, and the prevalence of ET in our group was 2.7%. Although this was a small group, our results have similar prevalence rates and anatomic distribution with other studies.