Mirror Therapy Rehabilitation for Lower Limb of Acute Stroke Patients

Abstract

This paper aims to study the effectiveness of mirror therapy (MT) having treated to acute stroke patients. The subjects of 20 acute stroke patients, who possessed the ability to respond to verbal instructions were randomly blinded and allocated to a control group (n = 10, 59.2 ± 2.28 years) and a mirror group (n = 10, 53.8 ± 6.14 years). Both groups were treated by intervention of traditional rehabilitation therapy comparing with mirror therapy. Intervention of mirror therapy was taken 60 minutes per day, 5 days per week for 12 weeks. Measures of intervention effectiveness were taken before treatment and after treatment by therapist using Brunnstrom stages, Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA) lower extremity score and Brunnel Balance Assessment (BBA) balance. Data were analyzed using independent sample t-test. The results revealed that, after 12 weeks of treatment, subjects of both groups gained statistically significant improvements in all variables measure (p < 0.05). Having compared with the control group, the participants of the MT group had greater improvement on the FMA score (31.0 ± 1.20 versus 28.7 ± 0.58). MT is inexpensive and easily applicable in conjunction with traditional physiotherapy for home care program. Consequently, MT proves to be an effective approach for rehabilitation of patients with post-acute stroke.