Several converging lines of contemporary evidence suggest that weakness presents a more serious compromise to movement function in poststroke hemiplegia than spasticity. This review examines the clinical and functional phenomena of weakness in poststroke hemiplegia, currently available evidence identifying physiologic substrates contributing to weakness, and reports of early investigations involving ...

Many sources of disability impact on quality of life and some are likely to remain relatively refractory to pharmacological or surgical treatment. Rehabilitative approaches may help despite the paucity of randomized control studies. There is increasing evidence from neuroscience, reviewed here, that supports current rehabilitative approaches and most importantly, can ...

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of blind rehabilitation training on self-reported mobility function in visually impaired adults. Mobility function was assessed with a questionnaire administered before and 2 months after subjects completed a comprehensive blind rehabilitation program that included orientation and mobility training. Subjects rated the level ...

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to describe clients' experiences of a work rehabilitation process. METHOD: Ten clients who had participated in work-related rehabilitation at a rehabilitation centre in the northern parts of Sweden were interviewed using a narrative approach. The interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis focusing ...

A barrier in outcomes and effectiveness research is the ability to characterize the interventions under review. This has been the case especially in rehabilitation in which interventions are commonly multidisciplinary, customized to the patient, and lack standardization in definition and measurement. This commentary describes how investigators and clinicians, working together, ...

The chronic respiratory questionnaire (CRQ) has demonstrated excellent measurement properties in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but in its original form it is limited by the requirement for interviewer-administration and the individualised dyspnoea questions. The objective of this randomised trial was to examine the evaluative properties of the ...

PURPOSE: The aim of this study is to describe social insurance officers' experiences of a work rehabilitation process at a rehabilitation centre in the northern parts of Sweden. In Sweden the social insurance company has a key role to coordinate all efforts concerning work rehabilitation planning between all rehabilitation actors. ...

PURPOSE: Vocational outcome, and in particular full-time paid work, is considered an important indicator of successful rehabilitation following traumatic brain injury (TBI). However it has not been established that these outcomes adequately or accurately represent the values of the people with TBI. This paper describes a study exploring the experiences ...

The transits of Venus in 1761 and 1769 appear to mark the starting point of instrumental science in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). This essay examines the conditions that triggered and constituted instrumental and institutional science on Indonesian soil in the late eighteenth century. In 1765 the Reverend J. ...

This paper describes the development of an instrument, the Client-Oriented Role Evaluation (CORE), to help meet the needs of rehabilitation clients and clinicians in their joint efforts to define realistic and meaningful therapeutic goals. The CORE is based on a model that captures the relationship among identity, roles, constituent occupations, ...

In October of 2002, a workshop was held as part of the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress in Edmonton, Canada, entitled "Under-Utilization of Mechanical Circulatory Support in Canada. Why and What Can Be Done?" The workshop examined various issues related to the use of mechanical circulatory support devices in the Canadian context. ...

The reported outcomes statement is an update to the previous recommendations for outcomes evaluation in cardiac rehabilitation/secondary prevention programs. The purposes of outcomes evaluation are reviewed, and practical information with examples is provided to help programs implement an outcomes-directed approach within routine patient care and program management functions.

This self-directed learning module highlights common rehabilitation issues in stroke survivors. Topics include spasticity, constraint-induced movement therapy, partial body weight-supported treadmill training, virtual reality training, vestibular retraining, aphasia treatment, and cognitive retraining. It is part of the study chapter on stroke and neurodegenerative disorders in the Self-Directed Physiatric Education Program ...

BACKGROUND: Current research suggests that women married to military service members may experience difficulty during the transition to motherhood attributable to the additional stressors of military life and inability to access traditional support systems. OBJECTIVE: To test the effects of a nursing intervention on prenatal and postpartum maternal role adaptation ...

Core strengthening has become a major trend in rehabilitation. The term has been used to connote lumbar stabilization, motor control training, and other regimens. Core strengthening is, in essence, a description of the muscular control required around the lumbar spine to maintain functional stability. Despite its widespread use, core strengthening ...

"Oral rehabilitation" is a phrase that is used to encompass several levels of oral therapy. Usually, dentists think of an oral rehabilitation as meaning restoration of all of the teeth in a given mouth. However, when only the defective teeth in any mouth are restored, that too could be defined ...

OBJECTIVE: To validate the effectiveness of the Full-time Integrated Treatment (FIT) program that is characterized by rehabilitation 7 days/wk, encouragement of daytime activity, and enhanced communication between staff in stroke rehabilitation. DESIGN: Since our facility changed from the conventional rehabilitation system of 5 days of treatment to the FIT program ...

Each year approximately 30.000 new stroke patients are reported in the Netherlands and due to the ageing population it is expected that this number will increase rapidly the next few decades. An estimated 70% of the patients who survive a stroke are unable to walk independently during the first few ...

Sixty-four people with serious mental illness participating in a vocational rehabilitation program completed a modified version of the Working Alliance Inventory (WAI), an instrument designed to assess therapeutic alliance. Individuals and their providers completed parallel forms. Reliability data show that the modified instrument demonstrates fair to moderate test re-test reliability ...

OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that a brief, formalized period of additional wheelchair skills training is safe and results in significantly greater improvements in wheelchair skills performance than a standard rehabilitation program. DESIGN: Randomized controlled trial. SETTING: Rehabilitation center. PARTICIPANTS: Thirty-five wheelchair users (20 with musculoskeletal disorders, 15 with neurologic ...

Development and application of virtual reality (VR) systems for rehabilitation is an iterative process produced by collaboration of an inter-disciplinary team of engineers, neuroscientists and clinician-scientists. In this paper the use of virtual reality technology for the rehabilitation of individuals post-stroke is described. The development of the hardware is based ...

Pulmonary rehabilitation has been demonstrated to be efficacious in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), however, its cost-effectiveness is largely unknown. The present study determined the cost-effectiveness of a community-based pulmonary rehabilitation program for COPD patients with mild, moderate, and severe disease. We compared the direct costs (in Canadian dollars) and ...

The rehabilitation of radioactively contaminated sites is an activity generally regarded with suspicion by the community. This is certainly the case for Australian Aboriginal traditional landowners. This paper describes the historical background to, and the successful development and implementation of, a consultation and planning process to rehabilitate former uranium mining ...

The lack of vocational rehabilitation in Iceland inspired the Janus Rehabilitation initiative in the year 2000. The team currently consists of two occupational therapists, a social worker, a physiotherapist, a psychologist, and a physician. Janus uses resources from local education establishments and is located at the Reykjavík Technical School. A ...

Continuing advances in virtual reality (VR) technology along with concomitant system cost reductions have supported the development of more useful and accessible VR systems that can uniquely target a wide range of physical, psychological, and cognitive rehabilitation concerns and research questions. VR offers the potential to deliver systematic human testing, ...

More knowledge is needed on different factors that can promote return to work among sick-listed persons. One such factor might be by their interactions with the rehabilitation professionals they encounter. The aim of the present study was to identify and analyze statements about positive encounters with rehabilitation staff, reported by ...

Functional recovery of the paretic upper extremity eludes the majority of patients post stroke. Although many tasks require the coordinated participation of both hands, rehabilitation strategies for the most part have focused on the paretic limb. This article reviews the behavioral basis of bimanual coordination both in health and after ...

Stroke results in functional arm impairments that persist even after rehabilitation training. The increasing numbers of persons at-risk in the population for stroke creates an increased need for therapy programs that can be effectively administered in both home and outpatient clinics. The aim of this work is to create a ...

The primary cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States is heart disease. It is a costly and pervasive group of disorders that effect all ages, races, and genders. Behavioral medicine and health psychology have focused on prevention and psychosocial influences of cardiovascular diseases for the past 30 years. ...

The programmed assembly of p-octiphenyl rods carrying six complementary tripeptide strands was studied in the presence of bilayer membranes using circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy. Thermal CD experiments demonstrated programmed assembly of anionic and cationic rods into supramolecules at low temperature that irreversibly transform into more stable supramolecules at intermediate and ...

This paper describes an ongoing researched remote rehabilitation assessment system that has a 6-freedom double-eyes vision robot to catch vision information, and a group of wearable sensors to acquire biomechanical signals. A server computer is fixed on the robot, to provide services to the robot's controller and all the sensors. ...

One of the overriding needs in the field of telerehabilitation is for user-centered interfaces that provide individuals with differing abilities with access to effective remote communication. This paper provides a foundation for developing and evaluating interfaces that move towards the aim of universal accessibility, and reports on progress for four ...

OBJECTIVE: In 2000, the University of Manitoba and the Department of Health and Social Services of Nunavut, Canada, jointly embarked upon the development of a community-based medical rehabilitation programme in the Kivalliq Region of Canada's central Arctic. Two main objectives were identified in moving forward with the implementation of a ...

A driver-yielding enforcement program that included decoy pedestrians, feedback flyers, written and verbal warnings, and saturation enforcement for a 2-week period was evaluated in the city of Miami Beach using a multiple baseline design. During baseline, data were collected at crosswalks along two major corridors. Treatment was introduced first at ...

Successful motor rehabilitation of stroke, TBI and SCI subjects requires an intensive and task-specific therapy approach. Budget constrains limit a hand-to-hand therapy approach, so that intelligent machines may offer a solution to further promote motor recovery and to better understand motor control. This new field of automated or robot-assisted motor ...

OBJECTIVE: Second-generation antipsychotics may enhance the rehabilitation of individuals with schizophrenia. The authors hypothesized that clients receiving second-generation antipsychotics would use vocational rehabilitation services more effectively and would have better employment outcomes than those receiving first-generation antipsychotics. METHODS: Ninety unemployed clients with schizophrenia and related disorders who were beginning a ...

This article describes a pilot project in specialized vocational rehabilitation program at Reykjalundur Rehabilitation Center in Iceland. It gives a brief historical overview of the development of the program, describes the theoretical frame used and the way the program is designed. Finally, it discusses the results of the program and ...

Climate policy needs to address the multidecadal to centennial time scale of climate change. Although the realization of short-term targets is an important first step, to be effective climate policies need to be conceived as long-term programs that will achieve a gradual transition to an essentially emission-free economy on the ...

This article attempts to show that the cultural-historical psychological theory of Aleksandr R. Luria (Luriya) and his colleagues is based on the foundations of historical materialism. It argues in particular that Luria's psychology, neuropsychology, and brain theory are integrated in the same scientific research program and are based on the ...

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a rehabilitation program on hope and self-efficacy in a sample of homeless adolescent substance abusers at a halfway house in Seoul, Korea. METHODS: Five residents of a halfway house were provided with a 16-week rehabilitation program based on ...

In persons with hemiparetic stroke, assessment and promotion of fitness have so far received limited attention, partly because of the lack of appropriate measures applicable to them. Because these mobility-impaired persons are prone to inactivity, disuse and insulin resistance are likely to occur, and can aggravate the already significant health ...

End-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients undergoing dialysis face much stress and have to make adjustments in their lives. To optimize health and improve quality of life, rehabilitation of renal patients is a necessity. Renal rehabilitation includes physical, social, psychological, and vocational elements. We established a renal rehabilitation program--including predialysis education, ...

PURPOSE: An effective rehabilitation program had been developed for psychiatric patients' self management of medication and symptoms in Korea. The rehabilitation program was designed to allow the patients to understand their illness, cope with their medical regimen, and prevent a relapse by recognizing any of the symptoms when they recur. ...

OBJECTIVE: The main objective of this investigation was to identify a set of variables usable in early outcome prediction of vocational rehabilitation. DESIGN: On commencement of rehabilitation at an employability institute, data were sampled using structured interviews and checklists. Two years later the subjects were followed up by telephone interviews. ...

The MIRID CML program is a program for the estimation of the parameter values of two different componential IRT models: the Rasch-MIRID and the OPLM-MIRID (Butter, 1994; Butter, De Boeck, & Verhelst, 1998). To estimate the parameters of both models, the program uses a CML approach. The model parameters can ...

STUDY OBJECTIVE: To determine the association between a clinician assessment of temperament in early adulthood and cause specific mortality. DESIGN: Prospective observational study. SETTING: Glasgow University. PARTICIPANTS: 9239 male former students aged 16-30 (mean 20.5) years who participated in an ongoing health survey from 1948-68. A physician recorded free text ...

OBJECTIVE: To develop a survey instrument that assesses implementation of key components of outpatient neurorehabilitation programs and test the capacity of this instrument to differentiate between rehabilitation approaches. DESIGN: The Neurorehabilitation Program Styles Survey (NPSS) was administered to 18 outpatient facilities: 10 specialized and 8 discipline-specific outpatient neurorehabilitation programs. Scores ...

Employers in Sweden are by law responsible for planning and controlling the working environment situation in their companies and for ensuring that any need for rehabilitation is noted as soon as possible and that action is taken. This includes developing a plan for rehabilitation. The aim of this study is ...

There is little knowledge on how sickness absentees experience encounters with rehabilitation professionals. This paper explores and describes negative emotions ("shame" in a broad sense) experienced by individuals on sick leave in their interactions with rehabilitation professionals. We performed a qualitative analysis of data from five focus-group interviews. The participants ...

Since the working environment act was passed in 1991, employers in Sweden are to plan and control the working environment conditions in workplaces. They are responsible for organized rehabilitation at the workplace including the development of rehabilitation plans and a plan for interventions in order for a sick-listed client to ...