Evidence for your Practice: Effects of home-based telerehabilitation in patients with stroke

 

Photo by Harry Cunningham on Unsplash

Article: Chen, J., Sun, D., Zhang, S., Shi, Y., Qiao, F., Zhou, Y., ... & Ren, C. (2020). Effects of home-based telerehabilitation in patients with stroke: A randomized controlled trial. Neurology, 95(17), e2318-e2330.

Study Aim: To determine the effects of a 12-week home-based motor training telerehabilitation program in patients with subcortical stroke.

Study Design: The intervention consisted of 10 rehabilitation training sessions per week with 60 minutes of occupational therapy and physical therapy and 20 minutes of EMG-triggered neuromuscular stimulation (ETNS) for each session. This was delivered either by telerehabilitation (experimental group) or face to face in an outpatient setting (control group).

Outcome measures included the Fugl-Meyer assessment (FMA), modified Barthel Index and MRI assessment.

Key Findings:

• The telerehabilitation group showed significant improvement in the Fugl-Meyer assessment and significantly increased resting-state functional connectivity for primary motor cortex areas at the end of the rehabilitation.
• For patients with stroke with hemiplegia, home-based telerehabilitation compared to conventional rehabilitation significantly improves some motor function tests.

Bottom Line for OT: Home based rehabilitation delivered by telehealth may be a useful treatment option to improve upper and lower extremity motor function for people with stroke with hemiplegia.

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