Deans' stroke musings: Evaluation of the effect of ankle-foot orthosis use on balance and mobility in hemiparetic stroke patients

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.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Evaluation of the effect of ankle-foot orthosis use on balance and mobility in hemiparetic stroke patients

Of course the AFO makes you more mobile but at the cost of recovering your ankle muscles.
http://www.naric.com/research/rehab/record.cfm?search=2&type=all&criteria=J61762&phrase=no&rec=116429
Author(s): Dogan, Asuman; Mengulluoglu, Munire; Ozgirgin, Nese.
Publication Year: 2011.
Number of Pages: 7.
Abstract: Study evaluated the effect of ankle-foot orthosis (AFO) use on balance and mobility in hemiparetic stroke patients. Fifty-one hemiplegic patients who had completed the rehabilitation program were included in the study. Subjects were assessed during the Ashburn walking and stair test, the time Up & Go test, the Berg Balance Scale, and the mobility subscale of the Stroke Rehabilitation Assessment of Movement in the presence and absence of the AFO. The patients were asked about their evaluations of AFOs in terms of its desirability/undesirability. All the subjects showed improvements in gait speed, balance and mobility with AFO use. However, there was no statistically significant difference between the durations of stair climbing with or without AFO; 45.1 percent of the subjects indicated that their gait speed increased; 35.3 percent indicated that they step on more confidently and 60.8 percent indicated that they consider AFO unaesthetic. It was determined that the use of an AFO resulted in improvements in both balance and ambulation activities of hemiparetic patients.
Descriptor Terms: ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY, EQUILIBRIUM, HEMIPLEGIA, MOBILITY, ORTHOTICS, STROKE.