Abstract
Aim: To examine the association of the amount of rehabilitation with functional gains
of elderly stroke patients at a convalescent rehabilitation ward using propensity
score analysis methods and the Japan Rehabilitation Database.
Methods: This study was a retrospective cohort study. From the database, 6875 patients who
were admitted to the convalescent rehabilitation wards with stroke were identified.
After excluding 4586 patients, 2325 were eligible for the study. Intensive rehabilitation
therapy (IRT) was defined as rehabilitation therapy of more than 15 hours per week
by a physical therapist, an occupational therapist, and/or a speech therapist. Functional
Independence Measure (FIM) gain, discharge rate to home, and FIM efficiency were examined
using student's t test and the χ2 test after inverse probability weighting (IPW).
Results: IRT was provided to 862 patients (37.1%). The unadjusted data showed that patients
in the IRT group had a longer hospital stay, more physical therapy, occupational therapy,
and speech and language therapy. After adjustment for IPW, the baseline characteristics
were found to be closely matched between the 2 groups. The IRT group showed significantly
higher motor FIM gain, cognitive FIM gain, FIM gain, and discharge rate to home.
Conclusions: The present study demonstrated that a longer rehabilitation time per week was associated
with increased functional gain in elderly stroke patients at convalescent rehabilitation
wards.
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: June 22, 2019
Accepted:
June 2,
2019
Received in revised form:
May 15,
2019
Received:
April 22,
2019
Footnotes
Financial Disclosure: None.
Identification
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jstrokecerebrovasdis.2019.06.007
Copyright
© 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
