Robotic therapy for chronic motor impairments after stroke: Follow-up results

Objectives: To study the effects of robotic rehabilitation in persons with chronic motor impairments after stroke and to examine whether improvements in motor abilities were sustained 4 months after the end of therapy. Design: Pretest-posttest design. Setting: Rehabilitation hospital, outpatient care. Participants: Volunteer sample of 42 persons with persistent hemiparesis from a single, unilateral stroke within the past 1 to 5 years. Intervention: Robotic therapy for the paretic upper limb consisted of either sensorimotor active-assistive exercise, or progressive-resistive training during repetitive, planar reaching tasks, 3 times a week for 6 weeks. Main Outcome Measures: Modified Ashworth Scale, Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA), Motor Status Scale (MSS) score, and Medical Research Council motor power score. Results: No significant differences were found among pretreatment clinical evaluations. Statistically significant gains from admission to discharge and from admission to follow-up (P<.05) were found on the FMA, MSS score for shoulder and elbow, and motor power score. Conclusions: Short-term, goal-directed robotic therapy can significantly improve motor abilities of the exercised limb segments in persons with chronic stroke that are sustained 4 months after discharge. This suggests that motor recovery can be enhanced by repetitive exercise training more than I year after stroke.