Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Serious Games
Date Submitted: Apr 26, 2021
Date Accepted: May 13, 2022
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
COMPARISON OF EFFECTS OF VIRTUAL REALITY TRAINING AND ROUTINE PHYSICAL THERAPY ON BALANCE AND UPPER EXTREMITY FUNCTION IN STROKE PATIENTS; A Randomised Clinical Trial
ABSTRACT
Background:
Stroke is an ironic disease for patients and their siblings and a chief cause of adult disability. Virtual reality training is now an effective way of stroke rehabilitation. However, upper limb sensorimotor functioning and balance less commonly targeted in literature.
Objective:
The objective of study is to check the effects of Virtual Reality training on balance and upper extremity sensorimotor functioning in stroke patients.
Methods:
It was a single assessor blinded randomised clinical trial. Sixty-eight participants with first-ever chronic stroke were included and rehabilitated in a clinical setting. Lottery method was used to randomly assign patients in either the Virtual reality group (n = 34) or routine physical therapy group (n = 34). VR group received 45 minutes session of VR training for 4 weekdays over 6 weeks and Routine physical therapy group received different stretching and strengthening exercises. The outcome measuring tools were Berg Balance scale for balance and Fugl-Meyer Assessment-Upper Extremity scale for sensorimotor, joint pain and range assessment. The assessment was done at start of treatment and at the 6-week intervention. Data analysis was done by SPSS 22.
Results:
Trial was completed by total 68 patients. Significant between-group differences in Berg Balance score (p = <0.01), FMA- Motor function (p = 0.030), FMA-Joint pain and Joint Range were found; however, no significance between-group differences in Fugl-Meyer Assessment-Upper Extremity Sensation were noted. All patients participated actively in both the groups.
Conclusions:
VR training is helpful in improving balance and function of upper extremity in routine life of stroke patients; although, it was not found to be better than conventional training in improving upper limb sensation. So VR training can be a better option in rehabilitation plans to increase functional capability. Clinical Trial: This trial was registered by the title “EFFECT OF VIRTUAL REALITY TRAINING AND ROUTINE PHYSICAL THERAPY ON BALANCE AND FUNCTIONAL INDEPENDENCE IN STROKE PATIENTS” on August 09, 2019 and it can be opened in https://www.irct.ir/ with the study identification number RCT20190715044216N1
Citation
The author of this paper has made a PDF available, but requires the user to login, or create an account.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.