Deans' stroke musings: Recovering Wrist and Finger Extension by Electromyography-Triggered Neuromuscular Stimulation

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.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Recovering Wrist and Finger Extension by Electromyography-Triggered Neuromuscular Stimulation

This research was done for chronic survivors way back in 2000. Have any of you had this therapy?
http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/31/6/1360

Background and Purpose—After stroke, many individuals have chronic unilateral motor dysfunction in the upper extremity that severely limits their functional movement control. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of electromyography-triggered neuromuscular electrical stimulation on the wrist and finger extension muscles in individuals who had a stroke ≥1 year earlier.

Methods—Eleven individuals volunteered to participate and were randomly assigned to either the electromyography-triggered neuromuscular stimulation experimental group (7 subjects) or the control group (4 subjects). After completing a pretest involving 5 motor capability tests, the poststroke subjects completed 12 treatment sessions (30 minutes each) according to group assignments. Once the control subjects completed 12 sessions attempting wrist and finger extension without any external assistance and were posttested, they were then given 12 sessions of the rehabilitation treatment.

Results—The Box and Block test and the force-generation task (sustained muscular contraction) revealed significant findings (P<0.05). The experimental group moved significantly more blocks and displayed a higher isometric force impulse after the rehabilitation treatment.

Conclusions—Two lines of evidence clearly support the use of the electromyography-triggered neuromuscular electrical stimulation treatment to rehabilitate wrist and finger extension movements of hemiparetic individuals ≥1 year after stroke. The treatment program decreased motor dysfunction and improved the motor capabilities in this group of poststroke individuals.