How many years has this been used in your stroke hospital? Oh, it isn't there, contact your board of directors and have them fire themselves for incompetency. 10 years of incompetency and your stroke hospital still has the same staff and leadership? Do you want stroke solved? Then have them all fired.
Effects of intensive arm training with the rehabilitation robot ARMin II in chronic stroke patients: four single-cases
PatriciaStaubli1,2,3
, TobiasNef
4,5
, VerenaKlamroth-Marganska*
1,2
and RobertRiener
1,2
Address:
1
Sensory-Motor Systems Lab, Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, ETH Zurich, Switzerland,
2
Spinal Cord Injury Center, Balgrist University Hospital, University Zurich, Switzerland,
3
Department of Biology, Institute of Human Movement Sciences and Sport, ETH Zurich, Switzerland,
4
Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Catholic University of America, Washington D.C., USA and
5
Center for Applied Biomechanics and Rehabilitation Research, National Rehabilitation Hospital, Washington D.C., USA Email: PatriciaStaubli-patricia.staubli@alumni.ethz.ch; TobiasNef-nef@cua.edu; VerenaKlamroth-Marganska*-verena.klamroth@mavt.ethz.ch; RobertRiener-riener@mavt.ethz.ch* Corresponding author
Published: 17 December 2009
Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation
2009,
6
:46doi:10.1186/1743-0003-6-46Received: 31 March 2009Accepted: 17 December 2009This article is available from: http://www.jneuroengrehab.com/content/6/1/46© 2009 Staubli et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Background:Robot-assisted therapy offers a promising approach to neurorehabilitation,particularly for severely to moderately impaired stroke patients. The objective of this study was toinvestigate the effects of intensive arm training on motor performance in four chronic strokepatients using the robot ARMin II.
Methods:
ARMin II is an exoskeleton robot with six degrees of freedom (DOF) moving shoulder,elbow and wrist joints. Four volunteers with chronic (
≥
12 months post-stroke) left side hemiparesis and different levels of motor severity were enrolled in the study. They received robot-assisted therapy over a period of eight weeks, three to four therapy sessions per week, eachsession of one hour.Patients 1 and 4 had four one-hour training sessions per week and patients 2 and 3 had three one-hour training sessions per week. Primary outcome variable was the Fugl-Meyer Score of the upper extremity Assessment (FMA), secondary outcomes were the Wolf Motor Function Test (WMFT),the Catherine Bergego Scale (CBS), the Maximal Voluntary Torques (MVTs) and a questionnaire about ADL-tasks, progress, changes, motivation etc.
Results:
Three out of four patients showed significant improvements (p < 0.05) in the main outcome. The improvements in the FMA scores were aligned with the objective results of MVTs.Most improvements were maintained or even increased from discharge to the six-month follow-up.
Conclusion:
Data clearly indicate that intensive arm therapy with the robot ARMin II can significantly improve motor function of the paretic arm in some stroke patients, even those in a chronic state. The findings of the study provide a basis for a subsequent controlled randomized clinical trial.
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