Evolving trends of systematic reviews on virtual reality for stroke rehabilitation.
Silvia Bargeri, Mariachiara Baggio, Stefania Guida and 2 others
PMID 39822392WHAT IT FOUND
The number of SRs on VR for stroke has grown to 58 published and 45 ongoing, but 77.6% of the published ones are rated critically low on methodological quality.
Upper limb function, ADL, and gait are the most studied outcomes.
Key findings
01The number of published and ongoing SRs on VR for stroke rehabilitation has grown significantly, with 58 published SRs (2007-2022) and 45 ongoing SRs (2014-2022) identified.
02Upper limb function and activity was the most assessed outcome (67.2%), followed by ADL (63.8%) and gait and balance (62.1%).
0377.6% of the included SRs were rated critically low on methodological quality (AMSTAR 2), and 69% had no recorded protocol.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
English-language publications only; non-English SRs are not represented. Children and adolescents were excluded, so the findings do not apply to paediatric stroke rehabilitation. Ongoing SRs were identified only from PROSPERO, not from other registries, so the count of in-progress work may be incomplete. This is a descriptive count of SRs. It does not assess whether VR actually improves any patient outcome, and it does not synthesise the primary studies' results. The 58 SRs themselves are mostly of critically low methodological quality, so the conclusions drawn from them by clinicians are built on a weak foundation.
Declared interests
Funded by the Italian Ministry of Health (Ricerca Corrente). The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or manuscript preparation.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this paper as evidence that VR works for stroke rehabilitation. It is a descriptive count of 58 published SRs and 45 ongoing ones, and it finds that most of those SRs are of critically low methodological quality. No patients were treated, no intervention was tested, and no outcome was measured in this study.
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