Inpatient rehabilitation following stroke: amount of therapy received and associations with functional recovery

I wish these people would think before they set up research. You need to go to the reason therapy works first and that would be the amount of dead brain damage vs. penumbra damage. If its mostly penumbra damage then of course therapy will work. Dead brain damage  will likely not be recovered during inpatient therapy. It takes a long time to move functionality to another location.
http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/09638288.2012.676145

Purpose: Canada’s Best Practice Recommendations for Stroke Care state that a minimum of one hour per day of each of the relevant core therapies be provided to patients admitted for inpatient rehabilitation. We examined whether this standard was met on a single, specialized stroke rehabilitation unit and if amount of therapy was an independent contributor to functional improvement. Methods: One-hundred and twenty-three, consecutive patients admitted to a 30-bed stroke rehabilitation program over a 6-month period with the confirmed diagnosis of stroke, were included. Workload measurement data were used to estimate the amount of therapy that patients received from core therapists during their inpatient stay. A multivariable model to predict Functional Independence Measure (FIM) gains achieved was also developed using variables that were significantly correlated with functional gain on univariate analysis. Results: On average, patients received 37 min of active therapy from both physiotherapists (PT) and occupational therapists (OT) and 13 min from speech-language pathologists per day. Admission FIM, length of stay, total OT and PT therapy time (hrs) were significantly correlated with FIM gain. In the final model, which explained 35% of the variance, admission FIM score and total amount of occupational therapy (OT) emerged as significant predictors of FIM gain. Conclusions: Patients admitted to a specialized rehabilitation unit received an average of 37 min a day engaged in therapeutic activities with both occupational and physical therapists. Although this value did not reach the standard of one hour, total amount of OT time contributed significantly to gains in FIM points during hospital stay.

Implications for Rehabilitation

• Patients on an inpatient stroke rehabilitation unit received less than the standard of one hour of physiotherapy and occupational therapy per day.
• Total amount of occupational therapy contributed significantly to gains in Functional Independence Measure points during hospital stay.