Effects of robot therapy on upper body kinematics and arm function in persons post stroke: a pilot randomized controlled trial.
Ilaria Carpinella, Tiziana Lencioni, Thomas Bowman and 4 others
PMID 32000790WHAT IT FOUND
Arm function did not differ between robot therapy and arm-specific physiotherapy.
Robot therapy improved shoulder-elbow coordination more, but the study was small.
Key findings
01The primary clinical outcome, Fugl-Meyer upper extremity score, improved similarly in both groups.
02The primary instrumented outcome, shoulder-elbow coordination, improved more in the robot group than in the control group.
03Robot therapy also produced a larger reduction in trunk compensation during the untrained move-and-place task.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
The sample was sized for the instrumented outcome, not the clinical Fugl-Meyer outcome. Two participants discontinued, and the main analysis excluded them. There was no follow-up, so it cannot show whether changes were retained. Subgroup analyses by sub-acute and chronic stage were small and exploratory. The study was retrospectively registered due to coordination issues between centers.
Declared interests
The supplied text does not include an author conflicts declaration. The publication types indicate non-U.S. government research support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that robot therapy gives better arm function than arm-specific physiotherapy. The primary clinical Fugl-Meyer outcome showed no significant between-group difference, and the trial was a small pilot.