Trunk rehabilitation after stroke: a pilot randomized controlled trial

Verheyden, G., Vereeck, L., Truijen, S., Nieuwboer, A. and De Weerdt, W. (2006) Trunk rehabilitation after stroke: a pilot randomized controlled trial. In Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair: Abstracts of the 4th World Congress for NeuroRehabilitation. SAGE Publications. pp. 118-119 . (doi:10.1177/1545968305284198).

Abstract

Background: This study examines the effect of additional trunk activity on trunk performance in subacute stroke patients in an inpatient rehabilitation setting. Methods: In addition to usual therapy, subjects randomly allocated to an experimental group (n = 14) received 4 times a week 30 min of hands-on trunk therapy, for 5 weeks. Patients in the control group (n = 11) received no additional therapy. Main outcome measures were the Trunk Impairment Scale (TIS) total and subscale scores (static and dynamic sitting balance and trunk coordination). Because of a significant difference in age between the experimental and control group, a 2-way ANCOVA analysis was used. Paired t-tests evaluated the evolution in the experimental and control group separately. Results: A significant effect of additional trunk therapy was found for the dynamic sitting balance subscale of the TIS (P = 0.027). When looking at the experimental and control group separately, significant improvements were found for the dynamic sitting balance subscale in the experimentalgroup (P < 0.0001), the coordination subscale in the experimental (P = 0.022) and control group (P < 0.0001) and the total TIS score for the experimental (P < 0.0001) and control group (P = 0.008).
Conclusion: This pilot study indicates that there is a potentially beneficial effect of additional trunk rehabilitation for stroke patients. Clinical practice and stroke research would benefit from future studies with larger number of patients and a placebo treatment for the control group.

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