Deans' stroke musings: Upper Extremity Rehabilitation Equipment for Stroke Patients in Taiwan: Usage Problems and Improvement Needs

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.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Upper Extremity Rehabilitation Equipment for Stroke Patients in Taiwan: Usage Problems and Improvement Needs

At least they are trying to figure out problems in rehab, compared to our pathetic stroke associations.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oti.1360/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false

Lan-Ling Huang¹,
Chang-Franw Lee²,
Ching-Lin Hsieh³,
Mei-Hsiang Chen^4,*

Article first published online: 5 NOV 2013

DOI: 10.1002/oti.1360

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to survey occupational therapists for the usage problems and for their improvement needs for upper extremity rehabilitation equipment (UERE). A questionnaire was given to experienced occupational therapists from 113 hospitals that provide occupational therapy services with three or more professional full-time therapists. A total of 48 hospitals sent back questionnaires, and 184 valid questionnaires were received. Most of the UERE had two major problems: The base of the equipment was unstable, and the equipment was uninteresting to use. The therapists reported that three major needs for design improvement in the UERE were adjustability of functions, exchangeability of components and recording of movement data. Some therapists had suggestions for designing new types of UERE, such as manual dexterity training equipment, activities of daily living oriented equipment, sensory re-education equipment, arm supination and pronation training equipment, and wrist extension training equipment. These findings reveal the genuine user needs of upper extremity devices and provide useful applications to the development and re-design of these devices. However, obtaining opinions primarily from experienced occupational therapists may pose a methodological limitation of this study. In future research, it is advised to include patients' opinions and also investigate whether a clinician's years of experience would affect his or her viewpoint of usage problems and improvement needs of the UERE