Deans' stroke musings: Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) for improving capacity in activities and arm function after stroke: a network meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials

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, February 1, 2018

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) for improving capacity in activities and arm function after stroke: a network meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials

And just why the hell are we wasting time on meta-analysis when we should have a stroke protocol out there already and just update it as needed? If everyone in stroke fucking stupid?
https://jneuroengrehab.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12984-017-0301-7/?

Bernhard ElsnerEmail author,
Gert Kwakkel,
Joachim Kugler and
Jan Mehrholz

Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation201714:95

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12984-017-0301-7

Received: 13 February 2017

Accepted: 30 August 2017

Published: 13 September 2017

Abstract

Background

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) is an emerging approach for improving capacity in activities of daily living (ADL) and upper limb function after stroke. However, it remains unclear what type of tDCS stimulation is most effective. Our aim was to give an overview of the evidence network regarding the efficacy and safety of tDCS and to estimate the effectiveness of the different stimulation types.

Methods

We performed a systematic review of randomised trials using network meta-analysis (NMA), searching the following databases until 5 July 2016: Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, AMED, Web of Science, and four other databases. We included studies with adult people with stroke. We compared any kind of active tDCS (anodal, cathodal, or dual, that is applying anodal and cathodal tDCS concurrently) regarding improvement of our primary outcome of ADL capacity, versus control, after stroke. PROSPERO ID: CRD42016042055.

Results

We included 26 studies with 754 participants. Our NMA showed evidence of an effect of cathodal tDCS in improving our primary outcome, that of ADL capacity (standardized mean difference, SMD = 0.42; 95% CI 0.14 to 0.70). tDCS did not improve our secondary outcome, that of arm function, measured by the Fugl-Meyer upper extremity assessment (FM-UE). There was no difference in safety between tDCS and its control interventions, measured by the number of dropouts and adverse events.