Deans' stroke musings: Do falls experienced during in-patient stroke rehabilitation affect length of stay, functional status, and discharge destination?

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, December 25, 2015

Do falls experienced during in-patient stroke rehabilitation affect length of stay, functional status, and discharge destination?

I was one of those fallers during my hospital stay, Got the dreaded yellow wrist band for that. My first night in the hospital proper, not the first three days spent in the ER and step-down units, I woke up in the middle of the night needing to go pee. I swung my legs over the side, took one step and fell over. Probably didn't help that my doctor never told me I had a stroke and what my deficits were. I'm not sure I even knew I was in a hospital at that point. That got me a catheter, wondered why they didn't install one immediately.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003999315015014

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doi:10.1016/j.apmr.2015.12.005

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Abstract

Objective

To compare length of stay, functional status, and discharge destination between individuals who fell during in-patient stroke rehabilitation and those who did not fall. We hypothesized that individuals who fell would have poorer recovery compared to those who did not fall.

Design

Retrospective cohort study.

Setting

Rehabilitation hospital.

Participants

106 individuals who fell during in-patient stroke rehabilitation (‘fallers’; mean age=67.8 years, SD =12.9; mean time post-stroke=26.4 days, SD=28.3) were matched to 106 individuals who did not fall (‘non-fallers’; mean age=67.3 years, SD=13.6; mean time post-stroke=21.9 days, SD=28.8) on age and functional status.

Interventions

Not applicable.

Main outcome measures

Total length of stay, Functional Independence Measure (FIM) assessed at discharge, and discharge destination.

Results

The mean length of stay for fallers was 11 days longer than non-fallers (p=0.0017). Non-fallers and fallers did not differ on discharge total FIM scores (p=0.19), and both groups were discharged home after in-patient rehabilitation (non-fallers: 77%; fallers: 74%; p=0.52)

Conclusions

This study suggests that falls experienced during in-patient stroke rehabilitation may have contributed to a longer length of stay; however, falls did not impact discharge functional status or discharge destination.