Helping Hands: Brief rehab method aids arm activity after stroke
By Bruce Bower
Stroke survivors who have difficulty using an arm or a hand experience lasting mobility gains after completing an unusual 2-week rehabilitation program, a new study finds.
Constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT) exercises a weakened limb repetitively while restraining the better-functioning limb with either a sling or a mitt for much of the day.
Among patients who had had strokes within the previous 3 to 9 months, 2 weeks of clinician-supervised CIMT produced more mobility in their stroke-weakened arms over the ensuing year than standard rehabilitation approaches did, reports a team led by neuroscientist Steven L. Wolf of Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. Wolf and his coworkers present their findings in the Nov. 1 Journal of the American Medical Association.