Telerehabilitation of Post-Stroke Patients with Motor Function Disorders: A Review

Abstract

Stroke is the main reason for disabilities of increasing geriatric population. It affects brain and motor function domains significantly reducing the life quality. Recent coronavirus pandemic raised a question on changing approaches to deliver post-stroke rehabilitation services to geriatric patients due to their high risk of serious illness. This paper presents an overview of current telerehabilitation approaches for motor function recovery and balance training of post-stroke patients. We used papers from peer-reviewed medical journals on stroke telerehabilitation. The review showed exergames, virtual reality (VR), web-platforms, and applications are extensively used in rehabilitation programs to gain clinical outcomes among geriatric stroke patients. Findings indicate telerehabilitation improves older patients’ functional ability via systematic training, positively affecting their life quality. The treatment therapy of older adults using telerehabilitation can be organized synchronously and asynchronously in home-based environment or in-clinic conditions. Telerehabilitation can be used as complementary therapy or as an alternative to conventional treatment. However, further research is required to test a variety of telerehabilitation systems using larger samples of post-stroke geriatric patients.

The Extent of Evidence Supporting the Effectiveness of Extended Reality Telerehabilitation on Different Qualitative and Quantitative Outcomes in Stroke Survivors: A Systematic Review

“…This approach is in line with the WHO 2030 strategy to increase rehabilitation and utilize technology to address the global shortage of rehabilitation professionals. Our findings are in agreement with recently published reviews that found telerehabilitation using different tools can be effective for stroke patients' rehabilitation [33,34,60]. On the other hand, some reviews reported weak evidence for using TR in stroke management [57,58].…”

“…Stroke patients, who typically have high rates of co-morbidity (for example, hypertension and diabetes mellitus), have experienced reduced and lower-quality healthcare services during the pandemic period of COVID-19, from delayed acute medical responses to delayed, canceled, or reduced rehabilitation appointments, especially for people who live in remote areas. Consequentially, there was a trend toward searching for a new tool of rehabilitation to overcome such risks and barriers [32][33][34]. Telerehabilitation using different models of extended reality provides a good solution to the need for a regular practice that helps patients obtain their rehabilitation services either with the supervision (synchronous) [35] or without the supervision (asynchronous) [36] of their therapists.…”

Artificial intelligence-driven virtual rehabilitation for people living in the community: A scoping review

“…Several recent reviews have been conducted on the applications of AI in the rehabilitation of different populations 8 , 10 , 18 , 19 , 44 – 46 as well as VRehab or telerehabilitation 9 , 47 – 50 . None of the published literature has addressed the combined role of AI and VRehab to support patient recovery in various rehabilitation populations.…”