Application of the Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA) and the Wolf Motor Function Test (WMFT) in the recovery of upper limb function in patients after chronic stroke: a literature review

 

I consider the Fugl-Meyer Assessment completely and totally worthless. NOTHING in that testing gets you recovered!

Using Fugl-Meyer for anything in stroke is the height of stupidity, nothing objective in it, so nothing is repeatable. This is totally against your stroke medical 'professionals' who will defend it and ignore that it does nothing for recovery.

Fugl-Meyer (110 posts to March 2011)

 You can see for yourself that nothing in this Wolf Motor Test actually gets you recovered.  To me this type of testing is useless except you'll have to consent since it probably is needed to get insurance to pay. To me it would be much more useful to spend my time doing protocol repetitions leading to recovery than this shit.

Wolf Motor Function Test (WMFT)

Application of the Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA) and the Wolf Motor Function Test (WMFT) in the recovery of upper limb function in patients after chronic stroke: a literature review

Cauê Padovani 1 , Cristhiane Valério Garabello Pires 2 , Fernanda Pret Chalet Ferreira 3 , Gabriela Borin 4 , Thais Raquel Martns Filippo 5 , Marta Imamura 5 , Chennyfer Dobbins Paes da Rosa 5 , Linamara Rizzo Batstella 6

ABSTRACT 

It is estmated that 45-75% of chronic adult stroke patents have difculty in using the hemiparetc upper limb (MS) in their daily life actvites (DLAs). Functonal scales are used in the practce of rehabilitaton, in the search for diagnoses and prognoses, and in evaluatng response to treatment. The Wolf Motor Functon Test (WMFT) and Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA) scales are the instruments most commonly mentoned in the literature. 

Objectve: 

The aim of this study was to review the use of the WMFT and FMA scales in the recovery of upper limb functon in patents afer chronic stroke. Method: We searched the MedLine database (PubMed) for artcles published from 2000 to 2013. The PICO method was adopted as the search strategy. The descriptors used for the search were: (stroke OR cerebrovas- cular disorders OR intracranial arteriosclerosis OR thrombosis intracranial embolism) AND (Fugl-Meyer assessment OR wolf motor functon test). Therapy/narrow was used as a search flter. 

Results: 

We found 181 studies, 89 of which were excluded because they did not meet the inclusion criteria or did not have a topic relevant to the review search. Afer selecton by ttle and by abstract, 92 artcles were fully read. Of these artcles, 47 were excluded because they did not fulfl the search objectve. All in all, 45 artcles were reviewed. FMA is the tool most used and it was found that 80% of the studies applied this scale to evaluate responses to the diferent therapies. In these studies, the interven- ton most used was the Constrained Induced Therapy (CIT) (25%), followed by Robotcs Therapy (22.2%). Although the WMFT was initally developed to assess the efects of CIT, nowadays this scale is used, afer the applicaton of other techniques, to assess the functonal recovery of patents with stroke sequelae. In our survey, 44.4% of the studies used WMFT; of these, 35% assessed the efects of CIT, 15% assessed robotc therapy for the upper limbs, and 65% for diferent therapies. 

Conclusion: 

For randomized controlled trials, the FMA scale was more used to assess functonal recovery in the upper limbs of chronic stroke patents, even afer applicaton of robotcs therapy. However, we found that it is not the most appropriate scale to assess the same outcomes afer CIT use. WMFT is the scale most widely used for functonal assessment afer applicaton of CIT; it is more sensitve than FMA for bilateral therapy, and is highly applicable in virtual reality therapy.