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

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

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Neurology

VOLUME=Volume 14 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neurology/articles/10.3389/fneur.2023.1056415

DOI=10.3389/fneur.2023.1056415

ISSN=1664-2295

ABSTRACT=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. The present study aimed to analyze the data provided by the Clinical History (CH) of people with stroke (pwS) that receives treatment with PT, 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 and treated were selected. Information provided: age, gender, stroke type and localization, 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. The Student’s t-test or Mann-Whitney U-Test, for determine the relatioship between the times and variables “stroke type”, “outpatient” and “occupational Therapy”. Krustal-Wallis H-test was applied for “localization” variable. Of the entire sample, 57.7% were male, 65% had ischemic stroke and 48.9% had a stroke on the left side. The hemorrhagic patients had an increased number of hospital PT sessions (p=0.01) and were younger (59.58 years) than ischemic patients (65.90 years) (p=0.04).
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.