Abstract
Previous studies suggested that both robot-assisted rehabilitation and non-invasive brain stimulation can produce a slight improvement in severe chronic stroke patients. It is still unknown whether their combination can produce synergistic and more consistent improvements. Safety and efficacy of this combination has been assessed within a proof-of-principle, double-blinded, semi-randomized, sham-controlled trial. Inhibitory continuous Theta Burst Stimulation (cTBS) was delivered on the affected hemisphere, in order to improve the response to the following robot-assisted therapy via a homeostatic increase of learning capacity. Twenty severe upper limb-impaired chronic stroke patients were randomized to robot-assisted therapy associated with real or sham cTBS, delivered for 10 working days. Eight real and nine sham patients completed the study. Change in Fugl-Meyer was chosen as primary outcome, while changes in several quantitative indicators of motor performance extracted by the robot as secondary outcomes. The treatment was well-tolerated by the patients and there were no adverse events. All patients achieved a small, but significant, Fugl-Meyer improvement (about 5%). The difference between the real and the sham cTBS groups was not significant. Among several secondary end points, only the Success Rate (percentage of targets reached by the patient) improved more in the real than in the sham cTBS group. This study shows that a short intensive robot-assisted rehabilitation produces a slight improvement in severe upper-limb impaired, even years after the stroke. The association with homeostatic metaplasticity-promoting non-invasive brain stimulation does not augment the clinical gain in patients with severe stroke.
Highlights
Severe upper limb impairment in chronic stroke patients does not respond to standard rehabilitation strategies; for this reason there is the need of new treatments that might be effective in patients with drastically limited residual movement capacity
Ten patients were randomized to robot-assisted therapy associated with real continuous Theta Burst Stimulation (cTBS) and 10 patients to robot-assisted therapy associated with sham cTBS, through a randomization stratification approach
Twenty patients underwent randomization (14% of the screened patients): 10 to robot-assisted therapy associated with real cTBS and 10 to robot-assisted therapy associated with sham cTBS
Summary
Severe upper limb impairment in chronic stroke patients does not respond to standard rehabilitation strategies; for this reason there is the need of new treatments that might be effective in patients with drastically limited residual movement capacity. In patients with moderate to severe upper-limb impairment, a slight improvement have been reported using robot-assisted rehabilitative treatment, even years after a stroke (Lo et al, 2010). Another innovative approach for the enhancement of motor recovery is represented by non-invasive human brain stimulation techniques, such as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). These techniques can induce long-lasting changes in the excitability of central motor circuits via long-term potentiation/depression (LTP/LTD)-like phenomena (Di Pino et al, 2014b). A recent study reported a mild motor improvement after 10 sessions of rTMS in a group of severe chronic stroke patients (Demirtas-Tatlidedea et al, 2015)
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