Opinion/Feedback/Introduction

Stroke is the greatest cause of morbidity in industrialised countries and the third cause of mortality (50,000 deaths per year). The annual incidence is around 300 per 100,000 inhabitants, equivalent to 150,000 new cases each year in France. Around half of survivors are left with some disability as a result of multiple impairments including motor impairments with a loss of strength, stereotyped movements, and changes in muscle tone and limitations in activities. Physiotherapy is essential and helps to reduce impairment and improve activities in patients with hemiparesis. It has been shown to be effective for the treatment of motor impairment and the improvement of function following stroke. Different techniques have been developed, however studies that have compared their effectiveness have not shown that any one technique is more effective than another. Nevertheless, it has been demonstrated that the intensity, the frequency, the specificity and the duration of physiotherapy is positively correlated with recovery. This means that increasing the frequency, the specificity and the duration of physiotherapy should lead to greater improvement in impairments and functional limitations. Since few years, several studies demonstrated the interest to associate usual physiotherapy to self-rehabilitation program. To that end, several devices such as self-rehabilitation logbook, web apps and games on games consoles (Wii ^® ; Kinect ^® ).

Objectives

In this session, we will study the different supports already available, those which already demonstrated scientifically their interest and their respective limits. The national scientific program actually performed will also be briefly presented.

Results

To summarize, over the past 15 years, there has been an increase in the number of studies of different home-based self-rehabilitation programs. These results suggest that this type of rehabilitation in the chronic phase of stroke can be effective to prevent deterioration as well as to continue improvement and ensure a good quality of life for patients.