NCT00719433

Functional Recovery in Stroke Patients With Task-Specific Robot-Aided Arm Therapy

• Status: Completed
• Phase: Phase 2 / Phase 3
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 76 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Zurich · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

The goal of this study is to determine whether task-oriented, robot-aided therapy is more effective than conventional physical and occupational therapy at promoting functional recovery of the affected arm in chronic hemiparetic stroke patients.

Detailed description

Robotic therapy will be performed with ARMin, which is a robotic arm exoskeleton that permits 3D movements of both proximal and distal arm joints. Combined with an audiovisual display, this device allows virtual training of Activities of Daily Living (ADL) and therapeutic gaming. A patient-responsive controller enables the assistance of the device only as needed. Chronic stroke patients (\>6 months post stroke) will be randomly assigned to either an experimental or a control group. The experimental group will perform task-related intensive therapy with the support of ARMin. Therapists will treat the patients of the control group with standard motor relearning therapy.

Conditions

• Stroke
• Upper Extremity Paresis

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DEVICE	robot therapy (ARMin)	therapy of the affected arm with a robot for eight weeks, three times weekly for one hour
OTHER	conventional therapy	physical and occupational therapy of the affected arm for eight weeks, three times weekly for one hour

Timeline

• Start date: 2008-07-01
• Primary completion: 2012-08-01
• Completion: 2012-09-01
• First posted: 2008-07-21
• Last updated: 2013-04-22

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Switzerland