Stroke rehabilitation patients, practice, and outcomes: Is earlier and more aggressive therapy better?

Objective: To examine associations of patient characteristies, rehabilitation therapies, neurotropic medications, nutritional support, and timing of initiation of rehabilitation with functional outcomes and discharge destination for inpatient stroke rehabilitation patients. Design: Prospective observational cohort study. Setting: Five U.S. inpatient rehabilitation facilities. Participants: Poststroke rehabilitation patients (N=830; age, > 18y) with moderate or severe strokes, from the PostStroke Rehabilitation Outcomes Project database. Interventions: Not applicable. Main Outcome Measures: Discharge total, motor, and cog nitive FIM scores and discharge destination. Results: Controlling for patient differences, various activities and interventions were associated with better outcomes including earlier initiation of rehabilitation, more time spent per day in higher-level rehabilitation activities such as gait, upper-extremity control, and problem solving, use of newer psychiatric medications, and enteral feeding. Several findings part with conventional practice, such as starting gait training in the first 3 hours of physical therapy, even for low-level patients, was associated with better outcomes. Conclusions: Specific therapy activities and interventions are associated with better outcomes. Earlier rehabilitation admission, higher-level activities early in the rehabilitation process, tube feeding, and newer medications are associated with better stroke rehabilitation outcomes.