Effect of Core Exercises on Motor Function Recovery in Stroke Survivors with Very Severe Motor Impairment

Abstract

Paresis of the upper and lower limbs is a typical issue in stroke survivors. This study aims to determine whether core exercises help stroke survivors with very severe motor impairment recover their motor function. This study employed a within-subjects design. Eleven hemiparetic stroke patients with very severe motor impairment (FMA score < 35) and ages ranging from 24 to 52 years old were enrolled in this study. All participants engaged in supervised core exercise training twice a week for 12 weeks. The main outcome measures were Fugl-Meyer Assessment Lower Extremity (FMA-LE) and Fugl-Meyer Assessment Upper Extremity (FMA-UE), which were measured before training and at intervals of four weeks during training. Repeated measures ANOVA was used to analyze the effect of core exercises on motor function performance and lower extremity motor function and upper extremity motor function recovery. There were significant differences in the mean scores for motor function performance, lower extremity motor function, and upper extremity motor function throughout the four time points. A post-hoc pairwise comparison using the Bonferroni correction revealed that mean scores significantly increased and were statistically different between the initial assessment and follow-up assessments four, eight, and twelve weeks later. This study suggests that 12 weeks of core exercise training is effective for improving motor function recovery in patients with very severe motor impairment.

Neurofunctional correlates of a neurorehabilitation system based on eye movements in chronic stroke impairment levels: A pilot study

“…The idea that motor recovery is a multifactorial process, which depends on multiple clinical factors such as lesion type, topography, size, and the baseline of somatosensory integrity after the stroke, is supported by other research works (Feydy et al., 2002 ; Ingemanson et al., 2019 ). Many factors could influence the recovery process for motor impairments; for example, the site of occlusion in the posterior circulation is associated with worse outcomes than in the anterior circulation (Sommer et al., 2018 ), the low baseline in NIHSS score is a predictor of good clinical results (Alexandre et al., 2021 ), or the kind of exercises used in rehabilitation, such as core exercises that are effective for improving motor recovery in stroke patients with severe motor impairments (Bacho & Khin, 2023 ).…”