The impact of physical therapy on functional outcomes after stroke: what's the evidence?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To determine the evidence for physical therapy interventions aimed at improving functional outcome after stroke. METHODS: MEDLINE, CINAHL, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, DARE, PEDro, EMBASE and DocOnline were searched for controlled studies. Physical therapy was divided into 10 intervention categories, which were analysed separately. If statistical pooling (weighted summary effect sizes) was not possible due to lack of comparability between interventions, patient characteristics and measures of outcome, a best-research synthesis was performed. This best-research synthesis was based on methodological quality (PEDro score). RESULTS: In total, 151 studies were included in this systematic review; 123 were randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and 28 controlled clinical trials (CCTs). Methodological quality of all RCTs had a median of 5 points on the 10-point PEDro scale (range 2-8 points). Based on high-quality RCTs strong evidence was found in favour of task-oriented exercise training to restore balance and gait, and for strengthening the lower paretic limb. Summary effect sizes (SES) for functional outcomes ranged from 0.13 (95% Cl 0.03-0.23) for effects of high intensity of exercise training to 0.92 (95% Cl 0.54-1.29) for improving symmetry when moving from sitting to standing. Strong evidence was also found for therapies that were focused on functional training of the upper limb such as constraint-induced movement therapy (SES 0.46; 95% Cl 0.07-0.91), treadmill training with or without body weight support, respectively 0.70 (95% Cl 0.29-1.10) and 1.09 (95% Cl 0.56-1.61), aerobics (SES 0.39; 95% Cl 0.05-0.74), external auditory rhythms during gait (SES 0.91; 95% Cl 0.40-1.42) and neuromuscular stimulation for glenohumeral subluxation (SES 1.41; 95% Cl 0.76-2.06). No or insufficient evidence in terms of functional outcome was found for: traditional neurological treatment approaches; exercises for the upper limb; biofeedback; functional and neuromuscular electrical stimulation aimed at improving dexterity or gait performance; orthotics and assistive devices; and physical therapy interventions for reducing hemiplegic shoulder pain and hand oedema. CONCLUSIONS: This review showed small to large effect sizes for task-oriented exercise training, in particular when applied intensively and early after stroke onset. In almost all high-quality RCTs, effects were mainly restricted to tasks directly trained in the exercise programme.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.026 | 0.143 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.012 | 0.009 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".