Deans' stroke musings: Step training improves reaction time, gait and balance and reduces falls in older people: A systematic review and meta-analysis

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, April 8, 2017

Step training improves reaction time, gait and balance and reduces falls in older people: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Useful for stroke? Will this ever be put into common use for stroke survivors? I'm guessing never.
https://www.mdlinx.com/internal-medicine/medical-news-article/2017/04/06/step-training-reaction-time-gait-balance/7096279/?

British Journal of Sports Medicine

Okubo Y, et al.

The impact of stepping interventions was investigated, on fall risk factors and fall incidence in older people. Both reactive and volitional stepping interventions appeared to lessen falls among older adults, by approximately 50%. this was attributed to improvements in reaction time, gait, balance and balance recovery, with the exception of strength. Prospective studies focused on optimizing the effectiveness and feasibility of stepping interventions, were necessitated.

Methods

The findings were pooled from the electronic databases (PubMed, EMBASE, CINAHL, Cochrane, CENTRAL) and reference lists of included articles from inception to March 2015.
Randomised (RCT) or clinical controlled trials (CCT) of volitional and reactive stepping interventions were the constituents of this study.
The study cohort comprised of older (minimum age 60) people.
They reported on falls or fall risk factors.

Results

The findings demonstrated that the stepping interventions markedly lowered the rate of falls (rate ratio=0.48, 95% CI 0.36 to 0.65, p<0.0001, I2=0%) and the proportion of fallers (risk ratio=0.51, 95% CI 0.38 to 0.68, p<0.0001, I2=0%).
Subgroup analyses stratified by reactive and volitional stepping interventions exhibited efficiency that was similar for rate of falls and proportion of fallers.
2 RCTs (n=62) displayed reduced laboratory-induced falls.
5 RCTs and CCTs (n=36–416) demonstrated prominently improved simple and choice stepping reaction time, single leg stance, timed up and go performance (p<0.05), with the exception of measures of strength.