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Stroke rehabilitation: principles of stroke

Part 1 of 2
Published on April 28, 2021   37 min

A selection of talks on Neurology

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0:00
Our talk today is on stroke rehabilitation. I'm Robert Teasell, Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Western University. I'm also affiliated with Parkwood Institute and the Lawson Research Institute in London, Ontario, Canada. This is two talks. In the first part of the talk, we're going to talk about the impact of stroke and discuss some of the principles of stroke in terms of standardization, then talk about things like personalizing care in terms of biomarkers, etc. The second part of the talk will deal more with some of the challenges with regard to individualized treatment approaches, try and delve into some of the motor and cognitive rehabilitation, then some of the newer trends in terms of integrating treatment approaches, and finally talk about community stroke rehabilitation.
0:54
Stroke is an important issue in our society, it's a common life-altering event. In Canada where I live, 62,000 people per year suffer a stroke, and over 405,000 are living with stroke complications. This is going to increase over the next two decades as our population ages. Well over a third of stroke survivors have some form of discernible disability, or are still dependent for their activities of daily living, five years after a stroke. Not only does stroke affect stroke patients, but it also affects caregivers, who experience an increase in their physical demands along with a decrease in their health-related quality of life, and they're two-and-a-half times greater at risk of suffering psychological distress than somebody who doesn't have to care for a stroke patient. Up to 50 percent of chronic stroke patients report depression. You can see that stroke has a significant impact not just on the stroke survivor, but for those people who have to care for them as well. There's been a lot of focus on stroke.