Active clinical trials for "Stroke"

The purpose of this study is to examine the reflex excitability of the rectus femoris in individuals with and without post-stroke Stiff-Knee gait. We use electrical stimulation of the peripheral nerve innervating the rectus femoris for a well-controlled reflex stimulus. We are investigating whether reflex excitability of the rectus femoris correlates with gait kinematics.

Stroke remains the 4th cause of death in Singapore and despite advances in medical care and rehabilitation, 40-50% of stroke survivors are left with permanent disability and reduced quality of life. Hand motor impairment is a very serious complication to every stroke survivor. These impairments include difficulty moving and coordinating the hands and fingers, which inhibits stroke patients from being able to perform daily functional tasks independently, resulting in a reduced quality of life. More than half of people with upper limb impairment after stroke will still have problems many months to years after their stroke. Therefore, improving hand function is a core element of rehabilitation where the aim is to recover and recruit the damaged neurons in the brain as soon as possible, within 3-6 months of the stroke as it thought to be the golden recovery period. In the hospital setting, every stroke patient will receive about 30 minutes to 1 hour of occupational therapy (OT) for functional training, including hand functional exercises. However, manpower constraints limited stroke patients to one OT session per day but they are encouraged to continuously practice on their own, which may cause patients to encounter difficulties without guidance and hence less motivated to perform. This proposed research aims to assess the efficacy and feasibility of the EsoGLOVE with Trigno Biofeedback (EMG sensors) in the inpatient rehabilitation setting through: Understanding the ability of the EsoGLOVE with Trigno Biofeedback (EMG sensors) in providing CPM exercise and assisting stroke patients with completing hand functional tasks, eventually improves patients' motor function and neural recovery. To generate evidence on this innovative device and further deploy it in clinical practice. A Health Technology Assessment (HTA) will be generated from this study to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the intervention. The investigators hypothesize that EsoGLOVE with Trigno Biofeedback (EMG sensors) combined with hand rehabilitation will add additional benefits to stroke patients. It might have better hand functional outcomes than hand rehabilitation alone as it can allow the patients to conduct functional task training in both passive and active modes.

This is a multicenter, open-label, evaluator-blinded, investigator-initiated, randomized clinical trial, to evaluate the clinical efficacy and safety of LF-rTMS in reducing infarct size, reducing disability rate and improving functional outcome in patients with acute ischemic stroke within 48 hours after stroke onset.

The purpose of this study is to determine a standardized protocol for swallowing therapy and this protocol's effects on recovery after a stroke

Abstract: Background: The leftover movement disorder of stroke patients is one of the main causes of disability, and there is still no specific solution. Studies have shown that the improvement of movement disorder symptoms in patients receiving DBS is a potential therapy. treatment approach. However, at present, there are few large-sample studies in this area at home and abroad, which cannot well reveal its actual therapeutic effect and safety, and do not fully understand its potential neural mechanisms, so it is impossible to form a unified and standardized treatment standard, which limits its wide application in clinical practice. Objectives: This study aimed to determine the efficacy and safety of hemiplegia recovery after deep brain electrical stimulation in stroke patients with hemiplegia. Methods/Design: This was a double-blind randomized cross-over controlled pilot study in which 62 patients were assigned to receive deep brain stimulation (DBS) and randomized into DBS and control groups using a randomized controlled study approach, DBS group One month after the operation, electrical stimulation was started, and the control group was given sham stimulation treatment. After 3 and 6 months of follow-up, all the machines were turned off. After a 2-week washout period, the control group was turned on, but the DBS group was given sham stimulation. After the 9th and 12th month of follow-up, all patients were given start-up treatment, and neuroimaging and various post-stroke motor-related scores were performed for data collection and analysis. Discussion: The investigators propose a research design and rationale to explore the effectiveness and safety of DBS in patients with post-stroke hemiplegia, and provide evidence and reference for DBS in the treatment of post-stroke dyskinesia. Study limitations are related to the small sample size and short study time period.

The performance of activities of daily living (ADL) depends to a large extent on the functionality of the upper limb and hand. Stroke is the leading cause of disability worldwide, with a significant individual, family and economic impact. After a stroke event, however, a large percentage of affected patients have a deficit of the hand and, six months after the acute event, 65% of patients with a deficit of the hand are unable to use and integrate the affected hand in activities of daily living, significantly reducing its quality. The impairment of strength, grip and general hand function makes it difficult to perform ADLs and affects the independence of functional activities, making the recovery of hand function an extremely challenging field in stroke rehabilitation.

The goal of this clinical study is to compare the effect of favourate taste stimulation of oral cavity and tounge, with sour and traditional single thermal stimulation in post-stroke patients with dysphagia. The main questions it aims to answer are: Whether favourate taste stimulation of oral and tounge is better than traditional thermal stimulation in improving swallowing function of patients with dysphagia. It has been reported that taste of sour stimulation can increase the frequency of swallowing. In this study, we want to know which is better for improving swallowing function between favourate taste stimulation and sour taste stimulation. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) will be applied in this study to understand the neural mechanism of taste stimulation in improving swallowing function. Participants screened as post-stroke dysphagia will accept swallowing evaluation and fNIRS test before and after treatment. The treatment include taste stimulation and traditional swallowing training. Researchers will compare favourate taste stimulation with sour-taste stimulation and single thermal stimulation to see if the swallowing function improved faster and better in favourate taste stimulation group.

Stroke is a global health problem, with an incidence in Europe of 147/100,000 people per year. It is estimated that 43% of them present spasticity throughout the first year, causing disability, hindering mobility and functionality, which can generate comorbidity problems, which in turn hinders its improvement over time. Recently, high quality studies have conclude that there is a moderate level of evidence with large effect size in reducing spasticity with dry needling, as well as being cost-effective in stroke patients in both the subacute and chronic phases. However, due to the limitation of manual evaluations of spasticity, and it is necessary to look for measurement alternatives that complement it, such as the analysis of the electromyographic activity and the muscular structure measured with ultrasound. These data could provide objective, useful and complementary information to clinical assessments to be more specific and effective in the treatment of stroke patients. This randomized controlled trial aim to analyse the effect of dry needling in this parameters in patients with stroke and spasticity, as well as correlated with gait variables. Each participant will be randomly assigned to the dry needling group or to the sham dry needling group, where participants receive a total of 4 sessions of ultrasound-guided dry needling or sham ultrasound-guided dry needling in the gastrocnemius medialis over 4 weeks, one per week. Measures of spasticity, electromyographic activity and muscle structure via ultrasound will made at baseline (T0) and immediate after each intervention (T1,T2,T3,T4). Gait variables will be made at baseline and after the last intervention (T0 and T4).

Stroke is a major cause of death and disability worldwide, frequently resulting in persistent cognitive deficits among survivors. These deficits negatively impact recovery and therapy engagement, and their treatment is consistently rated as high priority by stakeholders and clinicians. Although clinical guidelines endorse cognitive screening for post-stroke management, there is currently no gold standard approach for identifying cognitive deficits after stroke, and clinical stroke services lack the capacity for long-term cognitive monitoring and care. Currently available assessment tools are either not stroke-specific, not in-depth or lack scalability, leading to heterogeneity in patient assessments. To address these challenges, a cost-effective, scalable, and comprehensive screening tool is needed to provide a stroke-specific assessment of cognition. The current study presents such a novel digital tool, the Imperial Comprehensive Cognitive Assessment in Cerebrovascular Disease (IC3), designed to detect both domain-general and domain-specific cognitive deficits in patients after stroke with minimal input from a health professional. To ensure its reliability, we will utilise multiple validation approaches, and aim to recruit a large normative sample of age-, gender-, and education-matched UK-based controls. Moreover, the IC3 assessment will be integrated within a larger prospective observational longitudinal clinical trial, where post-stroke cognition will be examined in tandem with brain imaging and blood biomarkers to identify novel multimodal biomarkers of recovery after stroke. By leveraging this rich dataset, our study will allow more precise targeting of cognitive rehabilitation to stroke survivors that are most at risk of progressive cognitive decline and have the greatest potential for recovery.

The purpose of this research study is to measure the effect of participating in extra arm exercise in addition to standard rehabilitation exercises in the Acute Rehabilitation Unit. This study will compare two different ways to perform the extra arm exercise. The first is following a customized program of hand and arm exercises that will be developed for study participants by an experienced rehabilitation therapist. The second is moving a participants arm back and forth when they are sitting in their wheelchair by using a moveable wheelchair arm rest (Boost).