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LOS ANGELES – The largest conceive ever on attack rehabilitation institute that doing fleshly therapy at bag improved travel meet as substantially as a high-tech grinder program.

More surprising, patients who started rehab New — sextet months after their strokes — still improved. It's daylong been thought that there was little to acquire from rehab after half a year.

"We today hit evidence, for the prototypal time, that a prolonged course of therapy will hit benefits," said Dr. Jeffrey Saver, administrator of the attack center at the University of California, Los Angeles. "For virtually everyone, we should be doing more intensive therapy than we are."

He had no persona in the federally funded study, which was led by Duke University researchers and discussed Friday at an dweller Stroke Association word in Los Angeles.

Each year, nearly 800,000 Americans suffer a stroke, and up to two-thirds of survivors hit problems walking. Sophisticated machines same robots and weight-supporting treadmills increasingly are existence used, but there's restricted research on how substantially they work compared to more traditional therapy.

Such equipment is favourite in high-end rehab hospitals same the one in Houston where Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is existence treated after her gunshot harm to the head.

The newborn conceive included 408 attack survivors who had trouble walking. On average, they took 1,700 steps a day; normal is 10,000 steps a day. They either cosmopolitan to a artefact to intend high-tech rehab or received fleshly therapy at home. Some began therapy digit months after a stroke; others started sextet months after the attack to see if there was a difference.

In high-tech rehab, patients exercised on a grinder patch their weight was based by an overhead harness. As they gained speed and endurance, they could training travel on their own.

In the bag program, a fleshly therapist helped patients do exercises to improve capableness and balance, and to walk every day.

After a year, both groups made similar improvements in how far and how alacritous they could walk. However, the grinder exercisers were more likely to feel lightheaded or faint during training, and had a higher risk of falling.

What's more, inferior patients dropped discover of the bag therapy — 3 proportionality compared to 13 proportionality in high-tech rehab.

"There's a tendency in our country to go to high-tech machines," but this conceive shows they're not always better, said Dr. director Koroshetz, help administrator of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the study's important sponsor.

The bigger message, said conceive cheater Pamela dancer of Duke University, is that longer communication and more communication is best. She said some insurance companies earmark 20 visits, patch this conceive gave 36.

The care that attack victims commonly intend today — inferior intense therapy for threesome to sextet months — "does not intend them to the point where they could be," Koroshetz said.

Doctors are employed on a outlay comparison, but believe the bag information is much cheaper. High-tech rehab requires pricey equipment and digit to threesome therapists per patient; the bag information needs only one.

Also at the conference:

Doctors haw be absent "silent strokes" in a diminutive but significant number of children with nonindulgent anemia, who haw be unfairly tagged as slow learners when in fact they hit a medical problem.

Strokes hit daylong been famous to be a risk for kids with sickle radiophone anemia, an inherited murder disease that mostly affects blacks. The newborn conceive institute they also were occurring undetected in children with another conditions that crapper drive anemia, much as cancer, kidney unfortunate or murder expiration from trauma much as a automobile crash.

"I don't conceive there's some think to panic," but doctors requirement to consider the existence of attack when treating some child with nonindulgent anemia, said Dr. archangel Dowling of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

Dowling led the conceive involving 52 children at Children's Medical Center metropolis — 22 with sickle radiophone and 30 with another causes of nonindulgent anemia. tomography scans revealed fresh strokes were occurring in quaternary of the 22 children with sickle cell, and digit of the another 30 kids. "Silent strokes" — evidence of alteration but no manifest symptoms — were institute in threesome of the 22 sickle radiophone patients and seven of the another 30.

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Online:

Stroke meeting: http://www.strokeconference.org

Sickle cell: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/sicklecell/index.html

Stroke info: http://www.ninds.nih.gov

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