Paralysis Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Paralysis, including details on treatment, diagnosis, facial paralysis, sleep paralysis. | ||||||||
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The stroke upper-limb activity monitor: its sensitivity to measure hemiplegic upper-limb activity during daily life.de Niet M, Bussmann JB, Ribbers GM, Stam HJ Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. OBJECTIVE: To test the Stroke Upper-Limb Activity Monitor (Stroke-ULAM), which uses electrogoniometry and accelerometry to measure the amount of upper-limb usage in stroke patients in daily life conditions, for its sensitivity to discriminate between moderately recovered and well-recovered stroke patients and control subjects. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. SETTING: At home or a rehabilitation center. PARTICIPANTS: Seventeen patients with stroke and 5 control subjects. INTERVENTIONS: Not applicable. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Level of usage of upper limb and the percentage of affected upper-limb activity compared with unaffected upper-limb activity (proportion). RESULTS: The level of usage of the affected upper limb of stroke patients was lower than that of the nondominant upper limb of control subjects (electrogoniometry, 97.8 degrees+/-92.3 degrees/min vs 286.2 degrees+/-46.5 degrees/min, P<.01; accelerometry 1.0+/-0.5 g/min vs 2.4+/-0.8 g/min, P<.01). Stroke patients had lower proportions than control subjects in both electrogoniometry (22.6%+/-18.0% vs 84.6%+/-9.8%, P<.01) and accelerometry (39.2%+/-21.4% vs 93.3%+/-5.0%, P<.01). Well-recovered stroke patients had significantly higher proportions compared with moderately recovered patients on both electrogoniometry and accelerometry. CONCLUSIONS: The Stroke-ULAM sensitively measures actual performance, and therefore can be a valuable addition to the mostly capacity-oriented tools currently used to evaluate upper-limb function. Proportion is preferred to the level of usage. Published 10 September 2007 in Arch Phys Med Rehabil, 88(9): 1121-6.
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