Deans' stroke musings: Electrical Somatosensory Stimulation in Early Rehabilitation of Arm Paresis After Stroke: A Randomized 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.

Tuesday, October 2, 2018

Electrical Somatosensory Stimulation in Early Rehabilitation of Arm Paresis After Stroke: A Randomized Controlled Trial

You'll have to ask your doctor what is the ESS protocol and why isn't it being used for you?
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1545968318799496

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Emma Ghaziani, MR, Christian Couppé, PhD, Volkert Siersma, PhD, ...

First Published September 25, 2018 Research Article

Abstract

Background. Arm paresis is present in 48% to 77% of acute stroke patients. Complete functional recovery is reported in only 12% to 34%. Although the arm recovery is most pronounced during the first 4 weeks poststroke, few studies examined the effect of upper extremity interventions during this period.
Objective. To investigate the effect of electrical somatosensory stimulation (ESS) delivered during early stroke rehabilitation on the recovery of arm functioning.
Methods. A total of 102 patients with arm paresis were randomized to a high-dose or a low-dose ESS group within 7 days poststroke according to our sample size estimation. The high-dose group received 1-hour ESS to the paretic arm daily during hospitalization immediately followed by minimum 15-minute task-oriented arm training that was considered a component of the usual rehabilitation. The low-dose group received a placebo ESS followed by identical training. Primary outcome—Box and Block Test (BBT); secondary outcomes—Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA), grip strength, pinch strength, perceptual threshold of touch, pain, and modified Rankin Scale (mRS); all recorded at baseline, postintervention and at 6 months poststroke.
Results. There were no differences between the high-dose and the low-dose groups for any outcome measures at any time points. Improvements ⩾ minimal clinically important difference were observed for FMA, hand grip strength, and mRS in both groups.
Conclusions. Providing the present ESS protocol prior to arm training was equally beneficial as arm training alone. These results are valid for patients with mild-to-moderate stroke and moderate arm impairments. We cannot exclude benefits in patients with other characteristics, in other time intervals poststroke or using a different ESS protocol. Trial Registration. ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT02250365).

Keywords acute stroke, arm paresis, hand dexterity, electrical somatosensory stimulation, early rehabilitation, recovery of arm functioning