INTRODUCTION: The Parkinson's disease (PD) is a degenerative illness of the central nervous system, the key features are tremor, rigidity and bradykinesia. Therapeutic progress has brought about several clinical scales to assess PD patients, in an attempt to monitor disease development and to evaluale the affectiveness about different treatments. The objective of this bibliographic revision study is to characterize the main scales used to valuation of the PD, discussing their application onto physical therapy practice. MATERIALS AND METHOD: A bibliographical survey through of books, scientific articles and database specialized to acquisition of newspapers and sites of Internet. RESULTS: Six scales are focused: The Scale of Hoehn and Yahr about Incapacity Stages; Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS); Sydney Scale; PD Questionnaire (PDQ-39) and Quality of Life (PSN); and Parkinson's Activity Scale (PAS).The PDQ-39 stand out because of the patient perception about their quality of life. The PAS is the best attend the physical therapy objectives, because of evaluate the main problems of functional mobility. In addition to Hoehn and Yahr scale and the UPDR scale because of their reliability and may be used by physical therapists, allowing the best evaluation of patient's functional status. CONCLUSION: The follow the evolution of patients and their results about physical therapies interventions require knowledge of the physical therapists to make systematized decisions, and easy applications to value patients DP. The professional must make a clinical decision compatible at his job place, patient necessity and his environment that he lives.
Parkinson's disease; Rating Scale; Physical Therapy; Evaluation; Quality of life