Deans' stroke musings: Inpatient Stroke Rehabilitation: Ethnic and Psychosocial Predictors of Recovery Outcome

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.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Inpatient Stroke Rehabilitation: Ethnic and Psychosocial Predictors of Recovery Outcome

There is a definite problem with this research and conclusions, there is no way to compare functional recovery against another patient because there is no damage diagnosis. If a patient had a dime sized dead area and a softball sized penumbra the initial deficits could be the same as a softball sized dead area. But the penumbra person would be able to recover much easier.
http://gradworks.umi.com/34/68/3468466.html

Abstract:

As the new focus on preventative medicine has emerged, research continues to expand on diseases that impact physical and cognitive functioning, lead to long-term disability, and increase the risk of mortality. Stroke or cerebral vascular accident (CVA) has been identified as one of such diseases by the Centers for Disease Control (2007). Past literature has identified disparities between ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and other diseases in the recovery of stroke.

The aim of the current study was to investigate the effects of ethnicity and psychosocial factors on stroke recovery during inpatient rehabilitation. The study included 446 patients who had suffered an ischemic and/or hemorrhagic stroke and were admitted into inpatient rehabilitation for stroke recovery at Loma Linda Rehabilitation Institute from January 1005 through August 2009. Functional Independence Measurement (FIM) scores were used to measure change in overall functioning and cognitive functioning between the ethnic groups, type of insurance, marital status, and socioeconomic status. Supporting past stroke literature, ethnic differences between Caucasians, African Americans, and Hispanics were predicted to emerge in cognitive and xiii overall improvement, time delay from onset of stroke to admission into inpatient rehabilitation, and length of stay. It was further predicted that overall improvement would be associated with the patient's type of insurance, marital status, and socioeconomic status.

In contrary to the predictions, significant differences in overall and cognitive functioning, time delay and length of stay did not emerge between the Caucasian, African American, and Hispanic ethnic groups. Overall improvement was not associated with marital status or socioeconomic status. However, significant differences in overall improvement did emerge between the group of patients who had private insurance and those who had Medicare plus medical insurance. The patients with private insurance had better overall improvement. No significant differences were found between private insurance patients and those with Medicare or MediCal alone.

The results suggest that the margin on ethnic and socioeconomic status disparities may be closing in at one facility, as every patient regardless of the socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, type of insurance, or marital status is treated with the same highest quality of care.