You are here

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

PostScript
PostScript
Relationship between intensity and recovery in post-stroke rehabilitation: a retrospective analysis
  1. Belén Rubio Ballester1,
  2. Nick S Ward2,3,
  3. Fran Brander3,
  4. Martina Maier1,
  5. Kate Kelly4,
  6. Paul F M J Verschure1,5
  1. 1 Synthetic, Perceptive, Emotive and Cognitive Systems Laboratory, Institute for Bioengineering in Catalonia, Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain
  2. 2 Department of Clinical and Movement Neurosciences, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, London, UK
  3. 3 National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, London, UK
  4. 4 Therapy and Rehabilitation, National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, London, UK
  5. 5 Institucio Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avancats, Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain
  1. Correspondence to Professor Paul F M J Verschure, Synthetic, Perceptive, Emotive and Cognitive Systems laboratory, Institute for Bioengineering in Catalonia, Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain; pverschure{at}ibecbarcelona.eu

http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jnnp-2021-326948

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Introduction

    Work in animal models suggests high-intensity rehabilitation-based training that starts soon after stroke is the most effective approach to promote recovery.1 In humans, the interaction between treatment onset and intensity remains unclear.2 It has been suggested that reducing daily treatment duration below 3 hours at the acute and subacute stages leads to a poorer prognosis,3 while there may also be an upper bound beyond which high-intensity motor rehabilitation at the acute stage might lead to unwanted side effects.4 Designing optimal rehabilitation treatment programmes for stroke patients will not be possible until we understand ‘how much’, ‘when’ and ‘what’ treatment should be delivered.2 In this retrospective analysis, we assessed patients’ responsiveness to high-intensity and low-intensity rehabilitation protocols across different stages of chronicity post-stroke to address the ‘how much’ and ‘when’ questions.

    Patients and methods

    The Queen Square Upper Limb Neurorehabilitation (QSUL)5 and the Rehabilitation Gaming System (RGS)6 datasets comprise a cohort of 455 individuals with upper-limb hemiparesis treated between 2008 and 2018 at different stages of chronicity post-stroke (subacute <6 months, early chronic 6–18 months, late chronic 18 months to 4 years and beyond 4y >4 years).7 The QSUL programme delivered a 3-week high-intensity rehabilitation programme (high-intensity conventional treatment (H-CT), 6 hours daily, 5 days per week, 90 hours in total) based on a combination of conventional therapies (n=224). The RGS cohort (n=231) followed a 3–12 weeks low-intensity treatment programme (20–30 min/session, 3–5 days a week, 7.5–30 hours in total) consisting of either conventional treatment (low-intensity conventional treatment (L-CT), n=69, 30%) or computer-based embodied goal-oriented rehabilitation in virtual reality that was automatically adjusted to the patient’s performance (low-intensity RGS-based neurorehabilitation (L-RGS), n=162, 70%). Participants underwent assessment with the upper extremity section of the Fugl-Meyer (UE-FM) scale at baseline, end of treatment (weeks 3–6) and …

    View Full Text