OBJECTIVE. We identified the predictive factors of change in quality of life (QOL) after a distributed form of constraint-induced therapy (dCIT) among stroke survivors.METHOD. Seventy-four participants were treated with dCIT. We identified eight potential determinants of change: age, gender, side of lesion, time since stroke, cognitive status, motor impairment of the upper extremity, activities of daily living (ADLs), and instrumental ADLs (IADLs). The Stroke-Specific Quality of Life Scale (SS-QOL) was used to assess QOL.RESULTS. Right-sided lesion and onset >17 mo earlier determined greater improvement in the SS-QOL Energy domain. Onset >10 mo earlier, poorer IADL performance, and age >68 yr predicted improvement in the Family Role, Mobility, and Mood domains, respectively. CONCLUSION.Side of lesion, time since stroke, IADL performance, and age were the most important determinants of QOL in patients receiving stroke motor rehabilitation.

In the last several years, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has made much progress in the treatment of neurological diseases. The living space of TCM in neurological diseases lies in refractory diseases, aging and chronic diseases caused by multiple factors as well as sub-health state and chronic fatigue state. The effect model of TCM mainly consists of whole effect, self-organization, self-stable model, holographic effect and butterfly effect. The effective point of TCM in neurological diseases lies mainly in end-points and health-related events. Moreover, TCM has advantages in the evaluation of symptoms, syndrome and quality of life (QOL). Some key indexes should be included when evaluating the efficacy of TCM in neurological diseases. Meanwhile, the advantages of TCM such as end-points, health-related events and QOL should be highlighted. Multi-subject researching methods could be adopted to make a comprehensive evaluation of subjective and objective indexes. The clinical evidence on the TCM efficacy evaluation may come from RCTs, and other types of designs can also be considered.