Deans' stroke musings: Effects and Adherence of Mirror Therapy in People with Chronic Upper Limb Hemiparesis: A Preliminary Study

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, November 20, 2012

Effects and Adherence of Mirror Therapy in People with Chronic Upper Limb Hemiparesis: A Preliminary Study

I just use an 8x10 mirror in the lap. No results that I know of yet but I'm not a consistent user. Full article at the link.
http://www.hindawi.com/isrn/rehabilitation/2012/926784/
AbstractMirror therapy is a promising therapy with some benefit for motor recovery in people with chronic hemiparesis. However, there has been little investigation on the effect on upper limb sensory impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. A within-subject, repeated-measures study with 12 people with chronic hemiparesis was conducted. Participants underwent a thirty minute sensorimotor mirror therapy home-based exercise program, conducted three times per week for six weeks. Compliance with the program and the effect on sensory outcomes were determined. Light touch threshold and proprioceptive error, upper limb activity limitations, and participation restrictions were measured at baseline (Week 0), immediately after (Week 6), and six weeks (Week 12) following the intervention. Compliance with the program was fair, 66% of supervised and 62% of unsupervised sessions were completed. The paretic hand performed worse compared to nonparetic hand at baseline with no difference in sensory measures demonstrated over time. Activity limitations and participation restrictions improved by Week 12 (






). This sensorimotor mirror therapy home-based exercise program showed small improvements in light touch threshold and proprioception that appear to be functionally important for this group of people with chronic hemiparesis. Mirror therapy may be a useful tool for clinicians particularly for patient independent use.