Robotic therapy improves outcomes for immobilized stroke survivors
Severely impaired stroke survivors walk better when a robotic assist system was added to conventional rehabilitation, according to a new study. Italian researchers evaluated two-year mobility outcomes in 48 stroke survivors who had been discharged from a hospital and were unable to walk at the study’s start. Half underwent conventional overground gait rehabilitation and half had conventional rehab plus electromechanical robotic gait training for several months. The therapeutic robotic devices are electromechanical platforms attached to a patient’s feet that are controlled by a physical therapist. The therapist carefully measures a patient’s status and progressively sets bearing weight and walking pace. “After two years, five times more patients who underwent robotic assistance training were able to walk without assistance, but only the most severely impaired,” said Giovanni Morone, M.D., lead researcher of the study. “In others it seemed to make little difference, so the patient selection for this type of treatment is most important.”