Anna M. Barrett

BACKGROUND: This study compared the effects of contralaterally controlled functional electrical stimulation (CCFES) to cyclic neuromuscular electrical stimulation (cNMES) and task-oriented training (TOT) without electrical stimulation (TOT) on the recovery of hand function in stroke survivors with chronic hand hemiparesis. METHODS: In this assessor-blinded randomized controlled trial conducted at 4 sites in the United States, individuals 6 to 24 months poststroke with moderate-to-severe hand weakness were randomly assigned 1:1:1 to CCFES, cNMES, or TOT and prescribed 10 sessions/week of treatment-specific exercise at home plus 22 sessions of treatment-specific functional task practice in the laboratory over 12 weeks. The primary outcome was the change in the box and blocks test score at 6 months after treatment. Secondary measures included the upper extremity Fugl-Meyer, the action research arm test, and responder rates. Mixed effects analyses and differences of least square means were used to evaluate treatment effects. RESULTS: Between February 15, 2019, and January 24, 2024, 132 patients were randomized; 113 completed the treatment phase (36 CCFES, 39 cNMES, and 38 TOT) and were included in the analysis (modified intention-to-treat). There were no significant between-group differences in the change in the box and blocks test score at 6 months after treatment. CCFES improved upper extremity Fugl-Meyer scores more than cNMES and TOT, CCFES versus cNMES difference of 4.4 (95% CI, 1.5–7.3; P =0.003), and CCFES versus TOT difference of 3.7 (95% CI, 0.8–6.5; P =0.012). CCFES improved action research arm test scores more than TOT, CCFES versus TOT difference of 4.1 (95% CI, 1.1–7.1; P =0.008). The responder rate based on an increase in upper extremity Fugl-Meyer ≥5.25 points at 6 months after treatment was greater for CCFES than cNMES (67% versus 42%; P =0.047) and TOT (67% versus 38%; P =0.020). There were no between-group differences in responder rates based on the box and blocks test (27% CCFES, 32% cNMES, and 21% TOT) or action research arm test (42% CCFES, 32% cNMES, and 26% TOT). There were no serious treatment-related adverse events. CONCLUSIONS: By 6 months after 12 weeks of treatment, CCFES did not improve dexterity more than cNMES or TOT. CCFES reduced upper extremity impairment more than cNMES and TOT and improved upper limb function more than TOT. REGISTRATION: URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov ; Unique Identifier: NCT03574623.

Right brain stroke; this article reviews the symptoms, clinical presentation, and management of these two cognitive disorders occurring after right brain stroke. RECENT FINDINGS Stroke and occupational therapy practice guidelines stress a quality standard for spatial neglect assessment and treatment to reduce adverse outcomes for patients, their families, and society. Neurologists may attribute poor outcomes associated with spatial neglect to stroke severity. However, people with spatial neglect are half as likely to return to home and community, have one-third the community mobility, and require 3 times as much caregiver supervision compared with similar stroke survivors. Multiple randomized trials support a feasible first-line rehabilitation approach for spatial neglect: prism adaptation therapy; more than 20 studies reported that this treatment improves daily life independence. Evidence-based treatment of anosognosia is not as developed; however, treatment for this problem is also available. SUMMARY This article guides neurologists’ assessment of right brain cognitive disorders and describes how to efficiently assemble and direct a treatment team to address spatial neglect and unawareness of deficit....

Background and Purpose: Delirium, an acute reduction in cognitive functioning, hinders stroke recovery and contributes to cognitive decline. Right-hemisphere stroke is linked with higher delirium incidence, likely, due to the prevalence of spatial neglect (SN), a right-brain disorder of spatial processing. This study tested if symptoms of delirium and SN after right-hemisphere stroke are associated with abnormal function of the right-dominant neural networks specialized for maintaining attention, orientation, and arousal. Methods: Twenty-nine participants with right-hemisphere ischemic stroke undergoing acute rehabilitation completed delirium and SN assessments and functional neuroimaging scans. Whole-brain functional connectivity of 4 right-hemisphere seed regions in the cortical-subcortical arousal and attention networks was assessed for its relationship to validated SN and delirium severity measures. Results: Of 29 patients, 6 (21%) met the diagnostic criteria for delirium and 16 (55%) for SN. Decreased connectivity of the right basal forebrain to brain stem and basal ganglia predicted more severe SN. Increased connectivity of the arousal and attention network regions with the parietal, frontal, and temporal structures in the unaffected hemisphere was also found in more severe delirium and SN. Conclusions: Delirium and SN are associated with decreased arousal network activity and an imbalance of cortico-subcortical hemispheric connectivity. Better understanding of neural correlates of poststroke delirium and SN will lead to improved neuroscience-based treatment development for these disorders. Registration: URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov ; Unique identifier: NCT03349411.

Background and Purpose: Delirium portends worse outcomes after intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), but it is unclear if symptom resolution or postacute care intensity may mitigate its impact. We aimed to explore differences in outcome associated with delirium resolution before hospital discharge, as well as the potential mediating role of postacute discharge site. Methods: We performed a single-center cohort study on consecutive ICH patients over 2 years. Delirium was diagnosed according to DSM-5 criteria and further classified as persistent or resolved based on delirium status at hospital discharge. We determined the impact of delirium on unfavorable 3-month outcome (modified Rankin Scale score, 4–6) using logistic regression models adjusted for established ICH predictors, then used mediation analysis to examine the indirect effect of delirium via postacute discharge site. Results: Of 590 patients (mean age 70.5±15.5 years, 52% male, 83% White), 59% (n=348) developed delirium during hospitalization. Older age and higher ICH severity were delirium risk factors, but only younger age predicted delirium resolution, which occurred in 75% (161/215) of ICH survivors who had delirium. Delirium was strongly associated with unfavorable outcome, but patients with persistent delirium fared worse (adjusted odds ratio [OR], 7.3 [95% CI, 3.3–16.3]) than those whose delirium resolved (adjusted OR, 3.1 [95% CI, 1.8–5.5]). Patients with delirium were less likely to be discharged to inpatient rehabilitation than skilled nursing facilities (adjusted OR, 0.31 [95% CI, 0.17–0.59]), and postacute care site partially mediated the relationship between delirium and functional outcome in ICH survivors, leading to a 25% reduction in the effect of delirium (without mediator: adjusted OR, 3.0 [95% CI, 1.7–5.6]; with mediator: adjusted OR, 2.3 [95% CI, 1.2–4.3]). Conclusions: Acute delirium resolves in most patients with ICH by hospital discharge, which was associated with better outcomes than in patients with persistent delirium. The impact of delirium on outcomes may be further mitigated by postacute rehabilitation.

Animal and human literature supports spatial-motor “Aiming” bias, a frontal-subcortical syndrome, as a core deficit in spatial neglect. However, spatial neglect treatment studies rarely assess Aiming errors. Two knowledge gaps result: spatial neglect rehabilitation studies fail to capture the impact on motor-exploratory aspects of functional disability. Also, across spatial neglect treatment studies, discrepant treatment effects may also result from sampling different proportions of patients with Aiming bias. We review behavioural evidence for Aiming spatial neglect, and demonstrate the importance of measuring and targeting Aiming bias for treatment, by reviewing literature on Aiming spatial neglect and prism adaptation treatment, and presenting new preliminary data on bromocriptine treatment. Finally, we review neuroanatomical and network disruption that may give rise to Aiming spatial neglect. Because Aiming spatial neglect predicts prism adaptation treatment response, assessment may broaden the ability of rehabilitation research to capture functionally-relevant disability. Frontal brain lesions predict both the presence of Aiming spatial neglect, and a robust response to some spatial neglect interventions. Research is needed that co-stratifies spatial neglect patients by lesion location and Aiming spatial neglect, to personalize spatial neglect rehabilitation and perhaps even open a path to spatial retraining as a means of promoting better mobility after stroke.

Objective To evaluate the effect of intensive rehabilitation on the modified Rankin Scale (mRS), a measure of activities limitation commonly used in acute stroke studies, and to define the specific changes in body structure/function (motor impairment) most related to mRS gains. Methods Patients were enrolled >90 days poststroke. Each was evaluated before and 30 days after a 6-week course of daily rehabilitation targeting the arm. Activity gains, measured using the mRS, were examined and compared to body structure/function gains, measured using the Fugl-Meyer (FM) motor scale. Additional analyses examined whether activity gains were more strongly related to specific body structure/function gains. Results At baseline (160 ± 48 days poststroke), patients (n = 77) had median mRS score of 3 (interquartile range, 2–3), decreasing to 2 [2–3] 30 days posttherapy (p < 0.0001). Similarly, the proportion of patients with mRS score ≤2 increased from 46.8% at baseline to 66.2% at 30 days posttherapy (p = 0.015). These findings were accounted for by the mRS score decreasing in 24 (31.2%) patients. Patients with a treatment-related mRS score improvement, compared to those without, had similar overall motor gains (change in total FM score, p = 0.63). In exploratory analysis, improvement in several specific motor impairments, such as finger flexion and wrist circumduction, was significantly associated with higher likelihood of mRS decrease. Conclusions Intensive arm motor therapy is associated with improved mRS in a substantial fraction (31.2%) of patients. Exploratory analysis suggests specific motor impairments that might underlie this finding and may be optimal targets for rehabilitation therapies that aim to reduce activities limitations. Clinical Trial Clinicaltrials.gov identifier: NCT02360488. Classification of Evidence This study provides Class III evidence that for patients >90 days poststroke with persistent arm motor deficits, intensive arm motor therapy improved mRS in a substantial fraction (31.2%) of patients.

Objective: This study examined lexical and neuroanatomic correlates of reading errors in individuals with spatial neglect, defined as a failure to respond to stimuli in the side of space opposite a brain lesion, causing functional disability. Method: One-hundred and ten participants with left spatial neglect after right-hemisphere stroke read aloud a list of 36 words. Reading errors were scored as "contralesional" (error in the left half of the word) or as "other." The influence of lexical processing on neglect dyslexia was studied with a stepwise regression using word frequency, orthographic neighborhood (number of same length neighbors that differ by 1 letter), bigram and trigram counts (number of words with the same 2- and 3-lever combinations), length, concreteness, and imageability as predictors. MRI/CT images of 92 patients were studied in a voxelwise lesion-symptom analysis (VISM). Results: Longer length and more trigram neighbors increased, while higher concreteness reduced, the rate of contralesional errors. VLSM revealed lesions in the inferior temporal sulcus. middle temporal and angular gyri, precuneus, temporal pole, and temporo-parietal white matter associated with the rate of contralesional errors. Conclusions: Orthographic competitors may decrease word salience, while semantic concreteness may help constrain the selection of available word options when it is based on degraded information from the left side of the word.

Background: Delirium is well studied in the acute care setting, but there is limited understanding of its impact in the postacute care setting, particularly in the inpatient rehabilitation facility (IRF).Objective: To investigate the prevalence and related outcomes of delirium in the IRF setting, particularly patients' transfers to acute care hospitals.Design: Retrospective cohort study.Setting: A freestanding IRF.Participants: Patients discharged from an IRF between January 2016 and December 2016 (12 months).Interventions: Not applicable.Main Outcome Measures: Transfer to acute care hospitals, motor and cognitive Functional Independence Measures (FIM), length of stay, discharge disposition.Results: A total of 1567 patients (53.9% female, mean age 72.9 ± 13.9) were included in the analysis. Positive scores were found among 142 (9.1%) patients on a 3‐Minute Diagnostic Interview for Confusion Assessment Method (3D‐CAM), indicating delirium on admission. Fifty‐nine (3.8%) were unscorable on 3D‐CAM. Twice as many delirium patients were transferred to acute care hospitals compared to non‐delirium patients (22.5% vs. 10.8%, P < .001). Multivariate logistic regression showed that, for patients with 3D‐CAM positive scores, there was an increased risk of transfers to acute care hospitals at an odds ratio of 1.61 (1.03‐2.53, P = .04) after adjusting for age, gender, neurological diagnosis, and motor FIM score. The delirium group also showed lower gains in motor function, increased lengths of stay, and reduced discharges to home when compared to the non‐delirium group (P < .001).Conclusions: This study finds that delirium on admission to an IRF is associated with worsened outcomes related to function, length of stay, discharge status, and transfer to acute care hospitals. Positive delirium screening is an independent predictor for transfer to acute care hospitals from an IRF. Early identification of delirium is recommended in order to mitigate preventable transfers.

The most common deficits after stroke are in the motor system, affecting more than 80% of patients.¹ Few patients fully recover from arm weakness after a stroke. The remainder demonstrate persistent arm impairments that are directly linked to activity limitations, participation restrictions, reduced quality of life, and decreased well-being.^2-4 Some rehabilitation therapies can improve these deficits, with higher doses associated with better outcomes.⁵