We studied 16 stroke patients (11 left and 5 right
hemiplegics) who were enrolled in the rehabilitation program
at the Teishin-kai Hospital and Rapas Nursing Home
rehabilitation facilities in Sapporo. The patients in this study
were: able to sit independently without back support for at
least 1 minute; free from serious disorders of hearing and
language understanding, and had scores greater than 20 on
the Hasegawa Dementia Scale Revised (HDS-R); and were
able to understand the task and cooperate in the experiment.
Before the experiment, all patients in the intervention and
non-intervention groups received regular conventional
physical therapy. None of the subjects received sitting
balance training with visual feedback during regular physical
therapy. All patients provided their informed consent to the
procedures which were approved by the ethics committee of
the Hokkaido University Faculty of Health Sciences.