Building card houses is as effective as playing a video game in improving the motor functions of stroke patients.
For stroke rehabilitation, virtual reality doesn’t do better than a good ol ‘deck of cards, suggests a canadian study published at the end of June in the scientific journal The Lancet Neurology.
Loss of mobility of one arm, paralysis of part of the face, speech disorders… Post-stroke rehabilitation aims to recover lost capacities, in particular through physiotherapy and speech therapy exercises. Rehabilitation and re-education strategies that gradually integrate virtual reality. But is this new technology really effective?
Dominoes or Wii?
The team at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto conducted a clinical trial with 141 patients with an average age of 62 with upper limb motor disorders. They were cared for in 14 rehabilitation centers in 4 different countries (11 in Canada, 1 in Argentina, 1 in Peru and 1 in Thailand). After performing conventional rehabilitation, 71 patients played the Nintendo Wii console and 70 played cards, dominoes or ball games for 10 one-hour sessions.
In just two weeks, patients in both groups saw their motor performance improve by at least 30%. A month after the start of the trial, their abilities had improved by 40%.
Rehabilitation accessible to all
“On the other hand, we did not observe any significant difference between the groups in terms of strength, dexterity, gross motor skills and quality of life,” says Dr. Gustavo Saposnik, neurologist at St. Michael’s Hospital and head of these jobs. We all appreciate new technology and tend to think that it outperforms old-fashioned strategies, but sometimes they don’t. In this case, a simple recreational activity is as effective as technology. “
For the authors, these results are good news for the 15 million stroke patients worldwide who do not have access to rehabilitation and rehabilitation centers or do not benefit from a quality health system. .
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