Deans' stroke musings: Effects of Interactive Metronome Therapy on Cognitive Functioning After Blast-Related Brain Injury: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Trial

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.

Friday, September 27, 2013

Effects of Interactive Metronome Therapy on Cognitive Functioning After Blast-Related Brain Injury: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Trial

Whom is going to study this and see how to apply it to stroke? It's going to fall thru the cracks because we have no great stroke association.
http://atattentionfund.org/images/TBI/pdf/Nelson_et_al._Neuropsychology_Sep_23_2013.pdf

Lonnie A. Nelson, Margaret MacDonald, Christina Stall, and Renee Pazdan

Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, Fort Carson, Colorado

Objective:

We report preliminary findings on the efficacy of interactive metronome (IM) therapy for the remediation of cognitive difficulties in soldiers with persisting cognitive complaints following blast-related mild-to-moderate traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Method:

Forty-six of a planned sample of 50 active duty soldiers with persistent cognitive complaints following a documented history of blast-related TBI of mild-to-moderate severity were randomly assigned to receive either standard rehabilitation care (SRC) or SRC plus a 15-session standardized course of IM therapy. Primary outcome measures were Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) Index Scores. Secondary outcome measures included selected subtests from the Delis–Kaplan Executive Functioning System (Trail Making Test and Color–Word Interference) and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale–Fourth Edition (Symbol Search, Digit–Symbol Coding, Digit Span, and Letter–Number Sequencing) as well as the Integrated Visual and Auditory Continuous Performance Test.

Results:

Significant group differences (SRC vs. IM) were observed for RBANS Attention (p=.044), Immediate Memory (p=.019), and Delayed Memory (p=.031) indices in unadjusted analyses, with the IM group showing significantly greaterimprovement at Time 2 than the SRC group, with effect sizes in the medium-to-large range in the adjusted analyses for each outcome (Cohen’s d=0.511, 0.768, and 0.527, respectively). Though not all were statistically significant, effects in 21 of 26 cognitive outcome measures were consistently in favor of the IM treatment group (binomial probability=.00098).

Conclusion:

The addition of IM therapy to SRC appears to have a positive effect on neuropsychological outcomes for soldiers who have sustained mild-to-moderate TBI and have persistent cognitive complaints after the period for expected recovery has passed.