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.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Should Body Weight–Supported Treadmill Training and Robotic-Assistive Steppers for Locomotor Training Trot Back to the Starting Gate?

I used the Lokomat which I thought helped me tremendously because it didn't allow spasticity to drive my gait. The Lite-Gait I thought wasn't worth it because with such little weight on my feet I wasn't able to go though the walking motions effectively. Bruce H. Dobkin is rather famous having written

The Clinical Science of Neurologic Rehabilitation (Contemporary Neurology Series, 66)

Brain Matters: Stories of a Neurologist and His Patients

Recovery after Stroke

http://nnr.sagepub.com/content/26/4/308.abstract?etoc

Abstract

Body weight–supported treadmill training (BWSTT) and robotic-assisted step training (RAST) have not, so far, led to better outcomes than a comparable dose of progressive over-ground training (OGT) for disabled persons with stroke, spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, or cerebral palsy. The conceptual bases for these promising rehabilitation interventions had once seemed quite plausible, but the results of well-designed, randomized clinical trials have been disappointing. The authors reassess the underpinning concepts for BWSTT and RAST, which were derived from mammalian studies of treadmill-induced hind-limb stepping associated with central pattern generation after low thoracic spinal cord transection, as well as human studies of the triple crown icons of task-oriented locomotor training, massed practice, and activity-induced neuroplasticity. The authors retrospectively consider where theory and practice may have fallen short in the pilot studies that aimed to produce thoroughbred interventions. Based on these shortcomings, the authors move forward with recommendations for the future development of workhorse interventions for walking. In the absence of evidence for physical therapists to employ these strategies, however, BWSTT and RAST should not be provided routinely to disabled, vulnerable persons in place of OGT outside of a scientifically conducted efficacy trial.

However I thought my time in RAST was worth it. It was one of the reasons I switched clinics.