Deans' stroke musings: Haptic-based neurorehabilitation in post-stroke patients: a feasibility prospective multicentre trial for robotics hand rehabilitation.

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 19, 2013

Haptic-based neurorehabilitation in post-stroke patients: a feasibility prospective multicentre trial for robotics hand rehabilitation.

Its for recovering the hand, your therapists should be all over this.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?hl=en&q=http://downloads.hindawi.com/journals/cmmm/aip/895492.pdf&sa=X&scisig=AAGBfm2RzduXzb0fujBc-zuA033JkUGl6g&oi=scholaralrt
ABSTRACT
Background: Haptic robots allow the exploitation of known motor learning mechanisms,
representing a valuable option for motor treatment after stroke. The aim of this feasibility
multicentre study was to test the clinical efficacy of a haptic prototype, for the recovery of hand
function after stroke.
Methods: A prospective pilot clinical trial was planned on 15 consecutive patients enrolled in 3
rehabilitation centre in Italy. All the framework features of the haptic robot (e.g. control loop,
external communication, graphic rendering for virtual reality) were implemented into a real–time
Matlab/Simulink environment, controlling a five-bar linkage able to provide forces up to 20 [N] at
the end effector, used for finger and hand rehabilitation therapies. Clinical (i.e. Fugl-Meyer upper
extremity scale; nine hold pegboard test) and kinematics (i.e. time; velocity; jerk metric; normalized
jerk of standard movements) outcomes were assessed before and after treatment to detect changes in
patients’ motor performance. Reorganization of cortical activation was detected in one patient by
fMRI.
Results and conclusions: All patients showed significant improvements in both clinical and
kinematic outcomes. Additionally, fMRI results suggest that the proposed approach may promote a
better cortical activation in the brain.