Deans' stroke musings: Effectiveness of upper limb robotic-assisted therapy in the early phase of stroke rehabilitation: A single-blind, randomised, controlled trial

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, July 19, 2018

Effectiveness of upper limb robotic-assisted therapy in the early phase of stroke rehabilitation: A single-blind, randomised, controlled trial

Distribute a fucking stroke protocol on this then so survivors can bring this knowledge to their therapists.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877065718301283

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rehab.2018.05.054 Get rights and content

Introduction/Background

Upper limb (UL) robotic assisted therapy (RAT) is a powerful promising tool for stroke rehabilitation, particularly in the early stage. Associated to conventional therapy (CT), studies agreed that RAT decrease UL impairment. When it is provided as substitution, RAT is at least as effective as CT, but it remains uncertain if it is more effective than CT. In addition, studies often confine themselves to a single domains of the International Classification of Functioning framework (ICF).

This study aims to perform a single-blind randomized controlled trial to evaluate effectiveness of UL RAT in the acute phase of stroke rehabilitation following ICF, with RAT as partial substitution to CT.

Material and method

Forty-five acute stroke patients were randomized into two groups (CT group, n = 22 and RAT group, n = 23). Both interventions were dose-matched about the duration of treatment and lasted nine weeks. The CT followed a standard rehabilitation. In the RAT group, four sessions of CT (25%) were substituted by RAT each week. RAT consisted of moving the paretic UL along a reference trajectory while the robot provided an assistance-as-needed. A blinded assessor evaluated the patients before and after the intervention and at 6-month post-stroke according to all domains of ICF.

Results

Seventeen patients dropped out during the study. The UL motor control (Fugl Meyer +16%; P = 0.05) and gross manual dexterity (Box and Block test +10 blocks/min; P = 0.02) improved significantly more in the RAT group than in the CT group at 6-months post-stroke. The ability to perform activities of daily living and their social participation tend also to improve more in the RAT group than in CT group.

Conclusion

RAT is effective for the UL motor rehabilitation in the acute phase of stroke rehabilitation. Thus, a RAT protocol(Where the fuck is this protocol?) can be included in practice increasing patient intensity of rehabilitation and decreasing patient's impairments.