Background: Positive use of affected limbs in daily life is important to improve the affected upper limb function in post-stroke rehabilitation. Several studies have been conducted to quantitatively evaluate the amount of upper limb activity, but few have measured the finger usage. In this study, we measured the upper limb and finger usage simultaneously in hospitalized hemiplegic stroke patients with a ring-shaped wearable device and investigated the association with the finger usage and general clinical evaluation.
Methods: Twenty stroke hemiplegic patients staying in an inpatient hospital participated in this study. All patients wore a ring-shaped wearable device on both hands for 9 hours on the day of the intervention and the finger usage was recorded. For the outcome assessments of the rehabilitation, Fugl-Meyer Assessment Upper Limb (FMA-UL), Simple Test for Evaluating Hand Function (STEF), Action Research Arm Test (ARAT), Motor Activity Log-14 (MAL), and Functional Independence Measure Motor (FIM-m) were employed and were evaluated on the same day as the intervention.
Results: The finger usage of affected hand was moderately correlated with STEF (r=0.48, p<.05) and STEF ratio (r=0.47, p<.05). The finger usage ratio was moderately correlated with FMA-UL (r=0.56, p<.05) and ARAT (r=0.53, p<.05), and strongly correlated with STEF (r=0.80, p<.01) and STEF ratio (r=0.80, p<.01). The upper limb usage of affected side was moderately correlated with FMA-UL (r=0.46, p<.05), STEF (r=0.55, p<.05) and STEF ratio (r=0.54, p<.05), and strongly correlated with ARAT (r=0.57, p<.01). The upper limb usage ratio was moderately correlated with ARAT (r=0.48, p<.05) and STEF (r=0.55, p<.05), and strongly correlated with STEF ratio (r=0.61, p<.01). By contrast, MAL has revealed no correlation with any of the measurements.
Conclusions: These results suggest that this measurement technique is able to provide useful information that are not biased toward the subjectivity of patients and therapists.