Effectiveness of Mirror Therapy in Stroke Patients With Unilateral Neglect - A Randomized Controlled Trial (MUST)

Christian Medical College and Hospital, Ludhiana, India

Status and phase: Completed; Phase 3

Conditions: Hemispatial Neglect

Treatments: Other: Control group; Other: Mirror therapy

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01735877

MT2012

Details and patient eligibility

About

Hemi spatial neglect, or the tendency to ignore stimuli originating in a portion of the environment contra lateral to a cerebral lesion, can be a major source of functional handicap after stroke. The currently available treatments for unilateral neglect are scanning training, visual cuing approaches, limb activation strategies, visual imagery, tactile stimulation, prisms and sustained attention training.Mirror therapy improves the hand function in sub-acute stroke.

Hypothesis: To evaluate the effectiveness of Mirror therapy in the management of stroke patients with unilateral neglect.

Full description

About 30 - 50% of stroke patients are left with considerable residual deficits. The post stroke disabilities are due to loss of locomotion and activities of daily living, cognition and communication skills.Hemispatial neglect has been reported in association with damage to several different cerebral structures in a large-scale distributed neurocognitive network.Mirror therapy improves the hand function in sub-acute stroke. It also helps in the recovery of neglect in stroke patients. But little consensus exists as to whether one treatment is more efficacious than others and many studies fail to document duration of treatment effects or generalization to daily activities. The aim of our study is to evaluate the effectiveness of limb activation with MT and limb activation strategy alone in the management of stroke patients with unilateral neglect and to make the patient functional in activities of daily living.

Enrollment: 48 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion Criteria: 1.All stroke patients with parietal lobe and thalamic lesions 2. Stroke duration: within 48 hours 3. Patients willing to participate in the study 4. MRI/ CT scan showing parietal lobe and thalamic lesion 5. Patients with upper limb weakness

Exclusion Criteria:

1. Stroke duration more than 1 yr
2. Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) of less than 7
3. Uncooperative patients

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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48 participants in 2 patient groups

Mirror therapy

Experimental group

Description:

All eligible patients will be randomly allocated into 2 groups. Group 1 will be given Mirror therapy

Treatment:

Other: Mirror therapy

Control group

Sham Comparator group

Description:

Group 2 will be given sham mirror therapy

Treatment:

Other: Control group