Descriptive analysis of post-stroke patients in a neurological physical therapy unit

Mercedes Paniagua-Monrobel; Isabel Escobio-Prieto; Eleonora Magni; Alejandro Galan-Mercant; David Lucena-Anton; Elena Pinero-Pinto; Carlos Luque-Moreno

doi:10.3389/fneur.2023.1056415

Descriptive analysis of post-stroke patients in a neurological physical therapy unit

Front Neurol. 2023 Feb 28:14:1056415. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2023.1056415. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Mercedes Paniagua-Monrobel^{1

2}, Isabel Escobio-Prieto^{1

3}, Eleonora Magni¹, Alejandro Galan-Mercant^{4

5

6}, David Lucena-Anton^{4

7}, Elena Pinero-Pinto¹, Carlos Luque-Moreno^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physiotherapy, Faculty of Nursing, Physiotherapy and Podiatry, University of Seville, Seville, Spain.
² Neurological Physiotherapy Unit, Virgen del Rocio University Hospital, Seville, Spain.
³ Institute of Biomedicine of Seville (IBIS), Seville, Spain.
⁴ Department of Nursing and Physiotherapy, University of Cádiz, Cádiz, Spain.
⁵ MOVE-IT Research Group, Department of Physical Education, Faculty of Education, Sciences University of Cádiz, Cádiz, Spain.
⁶ Biomedical Research and Innovation Institute of Cádiz (INiBICA) Research Unit, Puerta del Mar University Hospital, University of Cádiz, Cádiz, Spain.
⁷ Intell-SOK (TIC-256) Research Group, Department of Informatics Engineering, University of Cadiz, Cádiz, Spain.

Abstract

Introduction: Physical therapy (PT) is the mainstay treatment in functional recovery after suffering a stroke. It is important in the acute phase of hospitalization after a stroke and later in the ambulatory phase.

Patients and methods: The present study aimed to analyze the data provided by the clinical history (CH) of people with stroke (pwS) who received PT treatment in order to establish a "preferential patient profile" (PPP) that may benefit more from an early PT treatment. This was an observational, descriptive, and cross-sectional study. A total of 137 pwS who had been treated with PT were selected. Information provided age, gender, stroke type and localization, and start and end dates of the different PT treatments. A descriptive analysis of the variables was conducted using absolute frequencies and percentages for the qualitative variables. Student's t-test or the Mann-Whitney U-test was used to determine the relationship between the time and variables "stroke type," "outpatient," and "occupational therapy." The Kruskal-Wallis H-test was applied for the "localization" variable.

Results: Of the entire sample, 57.7% were men, 65% had an ischemic stroke, and 48.9% had a stroke on the left side. The patients with hemorrhagic stroke had an increased number of hospital PT sessions (p = 0.01) and were younger (59.58 years) than patients with ischemic stroke (65.90 years) (p = 0.04).

Discussion and conclusion: Our results do not show significant differences between the persons < 65 years and the number of outpatient physiotherapy sessions performed, although the resulting values are close to significance. Our results suggest that the PPP is a young person, with a hemorrhagic and left or bilateral stroke.

Keywords: early ambulation; inpatients; neurological rehabilitation; outpatients; physical therapy department, hospital; stroke rehabilitation.

Grants and funding

This research and the APC were partially funded by the Erasmus + Strategic Partnership for Higher Education Program (Key Action 203), grant number 2020-1-PL01-KA203-081905.