CLINICAL TRIAL article
Front. Neurol.
Sec. Neurorehabilitation
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1602896
Combination of Robot-Assisted Glove and Mirror Therapy Improves Upper Limb Motor Function in Subacute Stroke Patients: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Study
Provisionally accepted
- 1Wuchang Hospital Affiliated to Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
- 2Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Key Laboratory of Physical Medicine and Precision Rehabilitation of Chongqing Municipal Health Commission, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China
- 3Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University., Chongqing, China
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Objective: This pilot study aimed to investigate the effects of combining mirror therapy with robot-assisted glove therapy (RMT) on upper limb functional recovery in patients with post-stroke hemiplegia.Methods: Fifty-two patients with subacute stroke were randomly assigned to three groups mirror therapy (MT) group, robot-assisted therapy (RT) group and or RMT group-using a computer-generated randomization table. Patients in all three groups received routine rehabilitation training, MT group received mirror therapy on the basis of this, RT group received rehabilitation robot glove training on the basis of conventional rehabilitation treatment, and the RMT group received rehabilitation robot glove training and mirror therapy at the same time. All interventions lasted for 4 weeks, 5 times a week. Before treatment, 4 weeks after treatment, Fugl-Meyer Assessment-Upper Extremity (FMA-UE), Brunnstrom Hemiplegic Rating Scale, Functional test for the Hemiplegic Upper Extremity-HongKong(FTHUE-HK), Functional Independence Measure (FIM) were used to evaluate the upper limb function and activities of daily living (ADL) of patients.Results: Compared with baseline, FMA-UE, Brunnstrom upper limb and hand grade and FIM score were observed across all three groups post-intervention(P < 0.05). Compared with MT group, FMA-UE (37.61±11.09), Brunnstrom upper limb (4.06±0.87) and hand grades (4.67±1.24) and FIM scores (94.17±9.49) in RMT group were superior after treatment (P < 0.05), and the differences were statistically significant. Conclusion: Mirror therapy combined with rehabilitation robot glove may be an effective treatment method to improve the upper limb function, promote the recovery of motor function and improve the ability of daily living of patients with hemiplegia in subacute stroke.
Keywords: mirror therapy, Stroke, Hemiplegia, Upper limb motor function, robot-assisted therapy
Received: 30 Mar 2025; Accepted: 29 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Qian, Liang, Liu, Yu, Yang and Bai. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Tangzhu Yang, Wuchang Hospital Affiliated to Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
Dingqun Bai, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University., Chongqing, China
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