Deans' stroke musings: No significant improvement in cognition with active vs. sham transcranial stimulation

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.

Friday, July 21, 2023

No significant improvement in cognition with active vs. sham transcranial stimulation

What is your doctor's EXACT PROTOCOL to restore your lost 5 years because of your stroke? NO protocol, you don't have a functioning stroke doctor! Run away.

No significant improvement in cognition with active vs. sham transcranial stimulation

Key takeaways:

Researchers conducted a literature review on using transcranial direct current stimulation to treat mild cognitive impairment.
Performance was better with active vs. sham, but the results were not significant.

Researchers reported no significant difference in cognitive performance between active and sham transcranial direct current stimulation for mild cognitive impairment, per a poster at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference.

“Transcranial direct current stimulation is a noninvasive intervention strategy for people with [mild cognitive impairment] to delay or prevent their progression to dementia,” Sandhya G, a PhD student at the Center for Brain Research at the Indian Institute of Science, and colleagues wrote.

Source: Adobe Stock. — Research found no significant difference in cognitive performance between active and sham transcranial direct current stimulation for those with mild cognitive impairment. *Image: Adobe Stock*

Researchers sought to review the extant body of literature on using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to treat mild cognitive impairment and to assess the effect of the procedure compared with sham via meta-analysis.

Their search for randomized and sham-controlled clinical trials yielded 221 results from PubMed and 686 results from Google Scholar as of November 2022. After screening, eight records were suitable for inclusion. Cognitive tests within the studies included Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), TMT Trail Making Test) A and B, Digit Span Test (DST) forward and backward, and Logical Memory Test (LMT).

Researchers utilized a random effects model for analysis and I² to evaluate heterogeneity.

Results showed those who received active tDCS performed better in tests for global cognition, MoCA and MMSE compared with those who underwent sham, but the differences were not statistically significant. According to researchers, subgroup and sensitivity analyses of MoCA scores yielded similar insignificant results, as did analyses for the remaining cognitive tests.

“The study identified no significant improvement in cognitive performance with active tDCS in comparison with sham tDCS,” G and colleagues wrote.