Deans' stroke musings: Home-based stroke rehab is as successful as formal rehab programs, researchers find

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.

What this blog is for:

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.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Home-based stroke rehab is as successful as formal rehab programs, researchers find

We can't let this become the basics of cheap stroke rehab, we are already on the do-it-yourself for chronic rehab we don't want to advance that to acute also.
http://www.mcknights.com/home-based-stroke-rehab-is-as-successful-as-formal-rehab-programs-researchers-find/article/203919/
Home-based stroke rehab is as successful as formal rehab programs, researchers find
May 27, 2011

Home-based physical therapy, when facilitated by a physical therapist, is just as effective as formal rehabilitation programs that use specialized treadmills to treat stroke patients, new research finds.

In what is being described as the biggest stroke recovery rehabilitation study ever conducted, researchers also found that recovery doesn't seem to peak at six months, contrary to popular belief.

"It's a fantastic study, rigorously done," Dr. Richard B. Libman, chief of vascular neurology at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, NY, said in a HealthDay News report. "It's incredibly important . . . not to write patients off after a certain period of time has elapsed. Patients have the potential to improve way after the point where we thought they couldn't."

Researchers at Duke University enrolled 400 stroke patients with moderate-to-severe walking problems from inpatient rehabilitation programs in California and Florida and divided them into three groups. One group received rehab therapy at home, while the other two groups were assigned to locomotor training, which involves using a treadmill while wearing a harness for partial body weight support. Patients in one of the locomotor groups started therapy two months after the stroke, while the other group started therapy six months post-stroke. The home-based group started its training two months after the stroke.

The average age of participants was 62. All received 36 supervised, 90-minute sessions over a period of 12 to 16 weeks. At the end of a year, all groups saw the same level of improvement in walking ability. The home-based group, however, used less expensive equipment, required fewer therapists and had better compliance rates.