therapy, one may argue from an epidemiological perspective that
even this small change in ADL score is likely to have a
disproportionately large impact for health care polices.1
The benefits of augmented therapy time were mainly related
to studies that focused the extra time on the lower limb or
general ADL and not to the 5 RCTs that provided additional
therapy time to the upper limb. It is important to note, however,
that an ADL outcome, such as the Barthel Index, is more
sensitive to lower limb improvement than to that in the upper
limb.9 Moreover, improvements in mobility are more easily
obtained than improvements in dexterity. We also know that
functional outcome of the upper limb at 6 months after stroke is
closely related to the level of recovery achieved in the first
month, at least in patients with a primary middle cerebral artery
stroke.45 In addition, there are indications that gains in the upper
limb may require more intense repetitive practice and may be
limited to those with less severe upper extremity deficits.32,45,46
This finding also suggests that for patients who are expected to
achieve at least some dexterity, every opportunity should be
given to regain function in the affected upper limb. In contrast,
those patients for whom a poor motor recovery without return of
dexterity is anticipated should have treatment focused on achieving
and maintaining a comfortable mobile arm and hand.
Compensation strategies with the nonparetic arm should be
fostered.47
Lastly, the findings of our meta-analysis showed that augmented
therapy also may lead to improvements of #5% in
IADL such as household and leisure activities. It should be
noted, however, that the number of such studies (n!9) is
limited.
Although, in the present study, the intensive rehabilitation
groups received #16 hours more exercise therapy than the
control group, considerable differences in the total amount of
additional therapy provided, as well as in the timing and the
focus of interventions, were observed. The augmented time of
exercise therapy ranged from a minimum of 13211 to a maximum
of 6816 minutes.30 Cumulative meta-analysis of studies
showed a positive trend in favor of those studies that applied a
larger treatment contrast between experimental and control
therapies. This suggests that the treatment contrast should
exceed 16 hours to promote significant differences in ADL and
that this more intensive therapy should be provided in the first 6
months after stroke. Interestingly, no ceiling effect for therapeutic
intensity, beyond which no further response is observed, was
found in the present study. This finding is consistent with a
recent RCT on the effects of additional rehabilitation intensity
after brain injury.48 Increasing the number of hours of therapy
per week given to adults recovering from brain injury accelerated
the rate of recovery of personal independence. In agreement
with this finding, Chen et al24 found in a retrospective analysis of
554 records of patients with stroke that gains on Functional
Independence Measure were weakly, but significantly, related to
therapy intensity and rehabilitation duration after controlling for
other variables. Future studies should focus on the effects of
larger treatment contrasts in stroke, either by increasing the
intensity of exercise time in the experimental group and/or by
restricting the therapy in the control group. However, this latter
suggestion may cause ethical concerns about depriving control
subjects of the usual and expected amount of treatment.9
The present meta-analysis has several limitations. First, we
defined intensity and treatment contrast on the basis of differences
in time that therapy was provided to the experimental and
control groups. This is, of course, a crude estimate of the actual
effort and energy that is spent in performing exercises.2,3 Other
aspects, such as patients’ motivation, attention paid by the
therapist, and time spent on home exercises, may have confounded
the reported outcomes. Second, although all included
studies investigated the effects of additional exercise therapy, the
content of therapy differed between studies with regard to goals
set and the type of reference treatment (or condition) applied.
Finally, we may have missed relevant studies not published in
scientific journals or published in languages other than English,
German, or Dutch.
It should also be noted that a number of other factors may
have influenced the present findings, including different intervention
goals, treatment content in the experimental group and
control groups, patient selection criteria, and outcome measures.
For example, most studies investigated the additional effects of
a particular method of treatment such as the neurodevelopmental
approach,4–6 facilitation exercise techniques,28 or task-specific
exercise programs.9,34 In all but 1 study, the control group
received some form of therapeutic intervention. In the RCT by
Kwakkel et al,9 the affected limbs we