Deans' stroke musings: Considerations in the Efficacy and Effectiveness of VR Interventions for Stroke Rehabilitation: Moving the Field Forward

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Considerations in the Efficacy and Effectiveness of VR Interventions for Stroke Rehabilitation: Moving the Field Forward

Write up your damned stroke protocols you lazy bastards.
http://ptjournal.apta.org/content/early/2014/10/16/ptj.20130571.abstract

Rachel Proffitt (rachel.proffitt@usc.edu) and
Belinda Lange

+ Author Affiliations

R. Proffitt, OTD, OTR/L, Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, University of Southern California, CHP 133, 1540 Alcazar St, Los Angeles, CA 90089 (USA).
B. Lange, PhD, Institute for Creative Technologies, University of Southern California.

Abstract

In the past 2 decades, researchers have demonstrated the potential for virtual reality (VR) technologies to provide engaging and motivating environments for stroke rehabilitation interventions.¹ Much of the research has been focused on the Exploratory Phase and jumps to Intervention Efficacy trials and Scale Up Evaluation have been made with limited understanding of the active ingredients in a VR intervention for stroke.^2,3 The rapid pace of technology development is an additional challenge for this emerging field, providing a moving target for researchers developing and evaluating potential VR technologies. Recent advances in customized games and cutting-edge technology used for VR are beginning to allow for researchers to understand and control aspects of the intervention related to motivation, engagement and motor control and learning. In this paper, we argue for researchers to take a progressive, step-wise approach through the stages of intervention development using evidence-based principles, take advantage of the data that can be obtained, and utilize measurement tools in order to design effective VR interventions for stroke rehabilitation that can be assessed through carefully designed efficacy and effectiveness trials. This paper is motivated by the recent calls in the field of rehabilitation clinical trials research for carefully structured clinical trials that have progressed through the phases of research.⁴