Efficacy of mirror therapy for improving unimanual motor skills in chronic stroke patients: A case series

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Unimanual activities are suggested as an effective intervention for the moderately or severely affected chronic stroke patients and bimanual activities for mildly affected cases in mirror therapy. OBJECTIVE: To observe the feasibility of unimanual mirror therapy to improve the motor skills of the effected hand in mild chronic stroke patients. METHODS: In this is case series study, n = 20 mildly affected chronic stroke patients were screened for participation in a nursing home setting. They were 45–60 years of stroke included ischemia (n = 3) and aneurysm (n = 1) of anterior cerebral artery, median time:3 years. The gross (Fugl-Meyer Assessment test), fine motor (Box and Block Tests) skills, the tripot pinch grip power (JTech Commander PichTrack) were assessed at baseline and post intervention. The intervention supervised included unimanual activities of the non-affected hands for 30 min, 5 days/week for 6 weeks. RESULTS: N = 4 participants were recruited from a nursing home setting; median age: 45, Gender: 3M; 1W. The causes of stroke included ischemia (n = 3) and aneurysm of anterior cerebral artery (n = 1). The median years of stroke was 3 years. The improvement in the gross motor skills (25%) of affected sides after unimanual training may be considered as feasable. There were also increase in tripot pinch grip power of the non-affected (34%) and affected hands (17%). The improvement in fine motor skills were 19% in affected hands the 10% in non-affected hands. CONCLUSIONS: The unimanual mirror therapy resulted in improvements in gross and fine motor skills and tripod pinch grip power of the affected hands of mild chronic stroke patients. This case series provides further evidence that mirror therapy is effective to improve function in patients with mild chronic stroke.