Deans' stroke musings: Effects of constraint induced movement therapy technique using wedge on weight bearing symmetry and functional balance in chronic hemiparesis patients

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, March 27, 2013

Effects of constraint induced movement therapy technique using wedge on weight bearing symmetry and functional balance in chronic hemiparesis patients

One of my readers had this wedge to help walking. Your therapist better know about this. Not to be done without your therapists blessing.
http://www.koomeshjournal.ir/browse.php?a_id=1822&sid=1&slc_lang=en
Article abstract:

Introduction: Weight bearing asymmetry is one of the basic causes of disturbance in maintaining balance of hemiparesis patients that could complicate standing and participation in activities of daily living in these patients. The purpose of this study was to investigate the immediate effects of constraint induced movement therapy technique using wedge on symmetry index as well as the short-term effects of this technique on functional balance of chronic hemiparesis patients.

Materials and Methods: In this quasi-experimental study, twenty-one hemiparesis patients by mean age of 54.28 (±10.06) and the mean passed duration of injury 50.14 (±36.48) months were selected by simple non-probability method. The symmetry index was measured in three conditions: non-wedge, wedge 5ºand wedge 7.5º. Also, functional balance of patients was measured with Functional Reach (FR) and Timed Up and Go (TUG) tests before and after using of short-term constraint induced movement therapy technique.

Results: According to the results of this study, symmetry index difference was significant in both wedge 5º and wedge 7.5º conditions compared with no-wedge condition (p&lt0.001), while it was not significant between wedge 5º and wedge 7.5º conditions. The mean scores of FR (P=0.012) and TUG (P=0.006) showed significant changes after using the constraint induced movement therapy technique

Conclusion: Constraint induced movement therapy technique caused immediate improvement of weight bearing symmetry and improvement of functional balance in short-term interval.