And once again rehabilitation departments(RIC this time) are not looking beyond their own silo. Damn, do they not have any understanding that if you stop the neuronal cascade of death you will have less dead and damaged neurons and thus your existing protocols will work much better. I'm working on a letter to the president of the RIC laying out all their failures.
http://www.fortmilltimes.com/2014/02/14/3288083/nexstim-announces-new-stroke-therapy.html
Every two seconds someone in the world suffers a stroke. A study from
the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago approached stroke
rehabilitation through a new combination of therapies which produced
significantly greater gains in patients’ motor function 6 months
post-stroke. The combination of non-invasive navigated transcranial
stimulation (nTMS) along with occupational therapy (OT) opened the door
to improving the quality of life for stroke survivors. The study
presented Thursday at the American Heart Association (AHA) and the
American Stroke Association’s (ASA) International Stroke Conference,
yielded results from the active group of improved function by 13+ points
in UEFM score.
“The results obtained in the Contrastim trial provide evidence that non-invasive neurostimulation
has major potential for improving motor function in stroke sufferers.” –
Jarmo Laine, MD, Nexstim VP of Medical Affairs
The Study
Dr. Richard Harvey and his team at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC) presented their research (presentation #152) which looked at the combination of non-invasive nTMS along with OT in post-stroke patients.
“It helped me greatly. It’s just immeasurable the progress that I have made.” – Dwayne Nelson, stroke trial patient
Treatment
consisted of 20 minutes of pre-functional OT, 17 minutes of nTMS,
followed by 60 minutes of upper limb task-oriented OT. Patients received
treatment during 3 visits per week, for 6 weeks, as the standard of
care in the US. They then returned for follow-up visits at 1 week, 1
month, and 6 months. The study found that Nexstim’s non-invasive
Navigated Brain Stimulation (NBS) System used as an adjunct to therapy
promoted lasting improvements in patients’ motor function compared to
the sham group.
“What we found is that there are areas of the
brain, usually where the lesion is, that are less active than they used
to be, and that there are actually areas on the brain on the opposite
hemisphere, the healthy side of the brain, that are more active than
they used to be.” – Lynn Rogers, PhD, Director, Neuralplasticity Laboratory, RIC
More about the technology at the link.
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