Welcome back once again to the ThreeSpires Physiotherapy blog. This time I thought we would return to our series of blogs looking at interesting physiotherapy topics. I am trying to make these quite varied and so this time I thought we could examine a topic that was raised in an article in our professional magazine (Frontline) this can be found here http://www.csp.org.uk/frontline/article/research-findings-dealing-stroke

This looked at the effect of repetitive task training on stroke survivors and examined if it was an effective treatment to help stroke patients with their recovery. This topic is relevant to us as a physiotherapy practice due to the large numbers of patients that we see who are recovering from a stroke and highlights the uncertainties surrounding what is the best treatment or therapy for anyone recovering from a stroke.

So, what did the article and the research say? Well firstly it is worth recognising that stroke is one of the major causes of disability worldwide and according to research there are approximately 150,000 new cases each year with about 1.2 million stroke survivors in the UK. This is a huge number and given how disabling having a stroke can be it is important to understand which rehabilitation methods offer the best recovery chances. I suppose some people might be surprised to know that this is still very much a topic of active research as even though strokes have been fairly well understood for a long period of time, knowing exactly what exercises and treatments are likely to make the most improvement is extremely difficult. This is due to the fact that the symptoms of stroke can be extremely varied, recovery often depends upon a range of factors such as age, how fast did the person receive treatment and the area of the brain involved. So even though most neurological physiotherapists do lots of repetitive task training with their patients it is by no means easy to say that this is definitely the best option.

Okay, back to the actual research: this article looked at a relatively recent Cochrane Review which looked at 19 new trials examining the effect of repetitive task training on both upper and lower limb tasks in patients following a stroke. The review concluded that although the trials were of low quality there was enough evidence to suggest that repetitive task training did make a difference for patients both in the upper and lower limb and that this should be offered to patients.

I have to say that as a physiotherapist who personally sees stroke patients I am very relieved to find that this review supports the work that myself and the other physiotherapists at our practice have been doing. Even though on a day to day basis working with patients you can see that they do make gains from practising tasks and working at things that they are struggling with it is important that we have research that supports our own clinical experience.

I hope that you have found this article helpful. If you or anyone you know has had a stroke then please feel free to get in touch. We are a home visit physiotherapy service serving Lichfield, Sutton Coldfield, Tamworth, Cannock, Rugeley and Walsall.