Deans' stroke musings: The influence of stroke rehabilitation units on functional recovery from stroke

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.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

The influence of stroke rehabilitation units on functional recovery from stroke

And once again there is no discussion of the actual damage diagnosis to correlate to functional recovery. Even I can figure out that if I have a pea sized dead area surrounded by a softball sized penumbra; that will recover better than a softball sized dead area like I have. When are stroke doctors going to use the scientific method to determine cause and effect?
http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/MeetingAbstracts/ma?f=102237092.html
OBJECTIVES: To determine what factors (patient characteristics, process of care, and structure variables) are predictors of patient outcome and recovery from stroke. The ability to predict who will benefit most and from what type of Rehabilitation will help physicians make the best treatment choices for their patients and give patients and their families the most realistic outlook for recovery from stroke. METHODS: Patients admitted to the stroke rehabilitation program from the acute care hospitals were examined over a 5 year period (1993-1997). Information on type of stroke, admission and discharge Functional Independence Measure (FIM) scores, length of stay, length of waiting time for admission, comorbidities, complications, and pre-stroke and post-stroke demographics were collected. These variables were used to determine predictors for recovery from stroke (improvement in FIM), predictors of complications, and patient discharge deposition. RESULTS: Preliminary analysis reveals that the presence of dysarthria, dysphagia, or inattention increases the probability of long-term dependency. Admission FIM scores are good predictors of discharge deposition and stroke outcome. Patients requiring institutionalized long term care appear to be at greater risk of developing reflex sympathetic dystrophy, severe spasticity, depression and deep vein thrombosis. CONCLUSIONS: Pre-admission FIM score appears to be the best predictor of stroke outcome. Patients admitted with a FIM between 47 and 96 show the greatest functional improvement but may still require institutional care. Patients with a FIM of 96 or above are most likely to be discharged home or to a residential setting; patients with an admission FIM less than 47 are most likely to require long-term institutionalization.