Deans' stroke musings: Hip Flexion Assist Orthosis Helps Adults Post-Stroke, Study Finds

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, May 1, 2012

Hip Flexion Assist Orthosis Helps Adults Post-Stroke, Study Finds

I couldn't find an image to understand what this is.
http://www.ptproductsonline.com/news/2012-05-01_02.asp
Although hip flexors help generate total power in gait, no device has been tested extensively for clinical purposes to cope with weakness in the hip flexors in patients with stroke. Italy-based researchers performed a study to assess the efficacy and safety of a newly developed hip flexion assist orthosis in adult patients with hemiparesis after stroke. The results were published in the May 2012 issue of Physical Therapy.
Stefano Carda, MD, PhD, from the department of neurorehabilitation and neuropsychology at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), Lausanne, Switzerland, and the department of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Azienda Universitaria Ospedaliera, Maggiore della Carità, Novara, Italy, led the study. Inclusion criteria in the prospective, randomized, before-after trial were hemiparesis resulting from stroke, with an onset of 8 weeks or more; ability to walk, even if with assistance; and hip flexion weakness, with a Medical Research Council Scale score of 4 or less.
Participants were evaluated using the 10-Meter Walk Test and the 6-Minute Walk Test, as well as with the Trunk Control Test, the Functional Ambulation Categories, the Motricity Index, and hip flexor strength on the Medical Research Council Scale. In all, 62 stroke survivors were tested in random order with and without orthosis.
According to the results, both the 6-Minute Walk Test and the 10-Meter Walk Test scores improved with the use of the orthosis. In addition, the researchers found a reportedly significant negative correlation for improvement between scores on the two main outcome measures with the orthosis and the Functional Ambulation Category scores. The improvement in 6-Minute Walk Test scores with orthosis was inversely related to hip flexor strength.
The researchers conclude that the data showed the use of a hip flexion assist orthosis could improve gait in patients with post-stroke hemiparesis, especially for those with more severe walking impairment.