Daily Life Upper Limb Activity for Patients with Match and Mismatch between Observed Function and Perceived Activity in the Chronic Phase Post Stroke

Useless, nothing here helps survivors recover. You don't uselessly measure stuff, YOU PROVIDE EXACT REHAB PROTOCOLS, you blithering idiots.

I'd fire all of you.

Daily Life Upper Limb Activity for Patients with Match and Mismatch between Observed Function and Perceived Activity in the Chronic Phase Post Stroke

Bea Essers 1, * , Marjan Coremans 1 , Janne Veerbeek 2 , Andreas Luft 3,4 and Geert Verheyden  

1 Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, KU Leuven, 3001 Leuven, Belgium;
marjan.coremans@kuleuven.be (M.C.); geert.verheyden@kuleuven.be (G.V.)
2 Luzerner Kantonsspital, Neurocenter, 6000 Lucerne, Switzerland; janne.veerbeek@luks.ch
3 Division of Vascular Neurology and Neurorehabilitation, Department of Neurology and Clinical
Neuroscience Center, University of Zurich and University Hospital Zurich, 8091 Zurich, Switzerland;
andreas.luft@usz.ch
4 Cereneo, Center for Neurology and Rehabilitation, 6354 Vitznau, Switzerland
* Correspondence: bea.essers@kuleuven.be Citation: Essers, B.; Coremans, M.; Veerbeek, J.; Luft, A.; Verheyden, G.  Sensors 2021, 21, 5917. https://doi.org/10.3390/ s21175917 Academic Editor: James F. Rusling Received: 26 July 2021 Accepted: 28 August 2021 Published: 2 September 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.  

 

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, KU Leuven, 3001 Leuven, Belgium; marjan.coremans@kuleuven.be (M.C.); geert.verheyden@kuleuven.be (G.V.) 2 Luzerner Kantonsspital, Neurocenter, 6000 Lucerne, Switzerland; janne.veerbeek@luks.ch 3 Division of Vascular Neurology and Neurorehabilitation, Department of Neurology and Clinical Neuroscience Center, University of Zurich and University Hospital Zurich, 8091 Zurich, Switzerland; andreas.luft@usz.ch 4 Cereneo, Center for Neurology and Rehabilitation, 6354 Vitznau, Switzerland * Correspondence: bea.essers@kuleuven.be  

 

Abstract:  

 

We investigated actual daily life upper limb (UL) activity in relation to observed UL motor function and perceived UL activity in chronic stroke in order to better understand and improve UL activity in daily life. In 60 patients, we collected (1) observed UL motor function (Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA-UE)), (2) perceived UL activity (hand subscale of the Stroke Impact Scale (SIS- Hand)), and (3) daily life UL activity (bilateral wrist-worn accelerometers for 72 h) data. Data were compared between two groups of interest, namely (1) good observed (FMA-UE >50) function and good perceived (SIS-Hand >75) activity (good match, n = 16) and (2) good observed function but low perceived (SIS-Hand ≤75) activity (mismatch, n = 15) with Mann–Whitney U analysis. The mismatch group only differed from the good match group in perceived UL activity (median (Q1–Q3) = 50 (30–70) versus 93 (85–100); p < 0.001). Despite similar observed UL motor function and other clinical characteristics, the affected UL in the mismatch group was less active in daily life compared to the good match group (p = 0.013), and the contribution of the affected UL compared to the unaffected UL for each second of activity (magnitude ratio) was lower (p = 0.022). We conclude that people with chronic stroke with low perceived UL activity indeed tend to use their affected UL less in daily life despite good observed UL motor function. Keywords: stroke; upper limb sensor activity; patient-reported outcome measures