How much do disuse syndrome patients improve with convalescent rehabilitation? Assessment of improvement

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determined characteristics of FIM gain after rehabilitation for patients with disuse syndrome and what factors are beneficial for increasing FIM gain. The subjects were 168 patients (87 males and 81 females). We investigated the relationship between the degree of FIM gain and etiology, age, sex, gender, history of cerebrovascular disease, dementia, body weight, body mass index(BMI), hemoglobin, protein, albumin, prognostic nutritional index, malnutrition, and dysphagia. The primary etiologies that resulted in disuse syndrome were COVID-19, respiratory disease, gastrointestinal disease, urinary disease, cardiovascular disease, and others. The average FIM-total gain by age decreased as age in-creased. FIM-total gain was 8.0 for patients in their 90s. FIM-total gain was 13.8 for patients with no past incident of cerebrovascular diseases, 7.6 for one past incident, and 4.0 for two or more past incidents. FIM-total gain of the patients of severe dysphagia was significantly lower than that of the patients of normophagia / mild or moderate dysphagia. There was a mild correlation between FIM-total gain and gain of body weight (r=0.21) and between FIM-total gain and gain of BMI (r=0.21). Patients with disuse syndrome over 90 or with two or more incidents of cerebrovascular diseases should be treated, not in rehabilitation but in nursing care. Keywords: Disuse syndrome; Rehabilitation; Malnutrition; Dysphagia; Functional independence measure (FIM)