Spasticity interventions include FES - Functional Electrical Stimulation, This is usually applied to the antagonist muscle, the one opposite the spastic one. In fingers the flexors are usually spastic causing clenched fingers, the FES is applied to the opposite muscle, the extensors.
Why? If the problem is the flexors why aren't we working on sending electrical signals to them telling them to relax? There has to be some kind of electrical signal telling them to relax. I don't have a good enough background to even see if this has been thought of and discarded or never thought of.
Doing FES is usually thought of as reducing spasticity when it actually does nothing of the sort. It fires the antagonist muscle to overpower the agonist muscle.
Use the labels in the right column to find what you want. Or you can go thru them one by one, there are only 29,286 posts. Searching is done in the search box in upper left corner. I blog on anything to do with stroke. DO NOT DO ANYTHING SUGGESTED HERE AS I AM NOT MEDICALLY TRAINED, YOUR DOCTOR IS, LISTEN TO THEM. BUT I BET THEY DON'T KNOW HOW TO GET YOU 100% RECOVERED. I DON'T EITHER BUT HAVE PLENTY OF QUESTIONS FOR YOUR DOCTOR TO ANSWER.
Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.
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My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
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When a muscle contracts the spinal cord sends a message to the antagonist to relax. If one muscle didn't relax when another fired muscles would never be able to produce joint movement.
ReplyDeleteV well put - as u explained in your post. I had my appointment to day at the hospital & asked them if they would trial me with the FES - after checking me out as suitable candidate, i'm now on the waiting list! (8-12 wks). The physio pretty well explained it as u did. If all goes well with the FES trial (see how i get on with it for a couple of weeks), i then have the option to buy it - costs around £400. Apart from that, they couldnt offer much help with the spasticity apart from drugs or botox; (drugs are out cos i come up with side effects whatever i'm given; have more luck with herbal medicine for my general health needs)...they said keep doing what i'm doing - exercise & more exercise...! They didn't seem to know much about TENS either. I guess us folks are ahead of the curve,pioneering types - "keep going & never give up!" echoes in my head! *:)
ReplyDeleteAs far as arm/hand goes re. FES, they hadn't got that far yet. Treating dropfoot is still new/novel for them. Shall talk more about my hand & arm when i next see them. I'm hoping that someone will give me advice with the TENS machine - i keep calling it TENS, I've got 2 different machines/things that do TENS, both with different modes, also does electrical stimulation.
If anyone's interested, my 2 "TENS machines" are - "Sanitas Digital EMS/TENS unit" - i used that loads in the early days/wks/months following my stroke which really speeded on my recovery (i had a pretty severe stroke affecting my right side, with speech difficulties & luckily only eye strain; no perceptual difficulties.) My other one is an "Electro reflexoxologist plus" made by Sasaki, which i'v been using on my feet & hands most evenings for 2/3 hrs the past 3 weeks or so. - so far notice my foot doesn't drag so much, but v slow progress/early days yet to tell any difference.
ReplyDeleteI have been researching Stroke rehab for my father when I came across this site. Was wondering if FES/TNS/EM, etc are safe for people who had hemorrhagic strokes, particularly in the right frontal region.
ReplyDeleteNAR: Cant seem to see my post so reposting , Is the FES/EMS/TENS safe for severe hemorrhagic strokes, particularly in the right frontal region?
ReplyDeletethe eStim has nothing to do with the type of stroke. Not sure what you mean by the frontal region, executive control? These units are meant to fire electrical signals through your nerves to make muscles contract.
ReplyDeleteHmmm, interesting. My husband had an FES sleeve made for his left arm by Phil Muccio of Axiobionics. We thought this was "the answer" since he has only had minimal movement in his upper arm so far. He has worn it all day, every day (well, almost every day) and it is exercising his arm for him, but thus far, we have only seen ONE little finger wiggle that he has not since duplicated. The next step was Botox injections into the spastic muscles. He hasn't seen much progress since those injections about 2 months ago. We were hoping that relaxing those muscles would be the next "answer." Stroke rehab is definitely different for each person. . . .
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