Deans' stroke musings: Reducing Abnormal Synergies of Forearm, Elbow, and Shoulder Joints in Stroke Patients with Neuro-rehabilitation Robot Treatment and Assessment

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, January 22, 2022

Reducing Abnormal Synergies of Forearm, Elbow, and Shoulder Joints in Stroke Patients with Neuro-rehabilitation Robot Treatment and Assessment

Reducing is NOT GOOD ENOUGH! You do realize survivors want cures? Not your tyranny of low expectations? Probably all my abnormal synergies are due to spasticity, so a cure for spasticity is needed.

Reducing Abnormal Synergies of Forearm, Elbow, and Shoulder Joints in Stroke Patients with Neuro-rehabilitation Robot Treatment and Assessment

Pin-Cheng Kung 1
Chou-Ching K. Lin 1,3
Ming-Shaung Ju1,2,*
Shu-Min Chen 1,4

1 Medical Device Innovation Center, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan, ROC
2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan, ROC
3 Department of Neurology, National Cheng Kung University Hospital, Tainan 701, Taiwan, ROC
4 Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, National Cheng Kung University Hospital, Tainan 701, Taiwan, ROC
Received 10 Jul 2009; Accepted 8 Sep 2009;

doi: 10.5405/jmbe.894

Abstract

Chronic stroke patients are often unable to control their joint movements independently due to abnormal synergies. In our previous work, three robot-assisted therapy indices (two biomechanical indices and one electromyography assessment) were applied to quantify the abnormal synergies of upper limbs with the aid of a neuro-rehabilitation robot. In this study, these quantitative indices are employed to investigate the time course of abnormal synergies in the affected upper limbs of chronic stroke patients treated with the robot. Eight chronic stroke patients are recruited to perform rectilinear tracking movements in four directions (back-forth, two oblique movements at 45 degrees, and right-left) during robot-assisted treatments for 4 months and 4 months of follow-up. The robot-assisted therapy indices (variation of forearm pronation/supination torque, and co-activation of elbow and shoulder muscles) reveal a significant decrease of abnormal synergies after 4 months of robot-assisted treatment and a slight regression in the following 4 months. Significant recovery is found in motor outcomes evaluated using Brunnstrom stage and Fugl-Meyer assessments. Both the robot-assisted therapy indices and clinical scales indicate modifications in abnormal synergies. The rectilinear tracking movements along the contra-proximal to ipsi-distal directions and the right-left directions are suitable for robot-assisted movement treatment for reducing abnormal synergies.