Is there a benefit to longer term rehabilitation for stroke patients? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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People who’d had a stroke, got standard rehabilitation followed by more intensive physical therapy saw better recovery, if they got the additional therapy in the first two months after their stroke, a much awaited study finds. Steven Zeiler, a stroke expert at Johns Hopkins, explains.

Zeiler: Every patient that qualified for this study was then randomized into one of three arms: they were either exposed to twenty hours of intense motor therapy beginning less than 30 days after stroke, beginning at two months after stroke, or beginning at greater than six months after stroke. The end result was that the patients that received the extra 20 hours in that either early or middle time period did significantly better than patients who were exposed to the extra 20 hours at greater than six months.   :34

Zeiler says this study makes the case that rehabilitation that’s specific to someone’s deficits is beneficial for a longer period of time. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.