Deans' stroke musings: Researchers Compare Walking Ability of Post-Stroke Patients and Non-Disabled Adults

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.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Researchers Compare Walking Ability of Post-Stroke Patients and Non-Disabled Adults

Something we should have had for years, evidence-based practice.
http://www.ptproductsonline.com/news/2012-09-06_01.asp
Individuals with stroke have reduced walking activity, although it is unknown whether this deficit is due to a reduction in all aspects of walking activity or only in specific areas. Researchers from Delaware and Maine performed a study to examine the walking activity in post-stroke individuals compared with older adults without disability. The results were published in the September 2012 issue of Physical Therapy.
Margaret A. Roos, PT, DPT, PhD, NCS, from the department of physical therapy at the University of Delaware, Newark, Del, led the cross-sectional study of 54 post-stroke participants and 18 older adults reported as having no disability. All participants wore a step activity monitor for 3 days, which calculated steps per day (SPD), bouts per day (BPD), steps per bout (SPB), total time walking per day (TTW), percentage of time walking per day (PTW), and frequency of short, medium, and long walking bouts.
The researchers classified 29 participants as household and limited community ambulators (HHA-LCA group) and 22 participants as unlimited community ambulators (UCA group). According to the results, the SPD, TTW, PTW, and BPD measurements were the greatest in the older, non-disabled adults and the lowest in the HHA-LCA group. In addition, walking in the short, medium, and long categories was found to be lowest in the HHA-LCA group, greater in the UCA group, and greatest in the non-disabled group.
The specific descriptors of walking activity presented can provide insight into walking deficits post-stroke that cannot be determined by looking at steps per day alone. The researchers stress the need to analyze the structure of walking activity, concluding that the deficits found during this study could be addressed through appropriate exercise prescription.