Robotic Therapy Shows Promise For Stroke Patients
Even years after suffering a stroke, robot-assisted therapy may help stroke patients regain some of their physical abilities, according to a new study.
However, improvement seems to be linked to the severity of a patient’s disability at the time of rehabilitation.
Steven C. Cramer, M.D., director of the Stroke Center at the University of California, Irvine, and his colleagues studied 15 patients with an average age of 61 who had partial paralysis on the right side of the body. Their strokes had occurred an average of 2.6 years before the therapy, ranging from four months to 10 years prior.
Seven patients underwent motor therapy, which consists of computer-aided grasping and releasing alternating with rest, and eight patients received a more complex kind of robotic therapy called premotor therapy, which requires grasping, releasing and resting depending on details of a timed visual cue. Cramer said the second kind of therapy requires additional engagement of a higher level of the brain, the premotor cortex.
Researchers used three tools to measure the patients’ progress, and they were assessed after two weeks of therapy that included 24 hours of hand-wrist exercises and virtual-reality video-game playing, and again one month later.
The researchers discovered that among all 15 patients, both forms of therapy produced significant and similar improvements. However, the patients with less motor system damage at the beginning of therapy showed significantly more gain with premotor than with motor therapy after one month.
"The status of a patient’s motor system at the beginning of therapy is very much related to how treatment will affect them," Cramer said. "Robotic therapy may be useful in its own right. But it could also help rewire, or reshape, the brain in conjunction with other stroke therapies."
——–
On The Net: