By ALICIA CHANG and MARILYNN MARCHIONE
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES – The largest study ever on stroke rehabilitation found that doing physical therapy at home improved walking just as well as a high-tech treadmill program.
More surprising, patients who started rehab late – six months after their strokes – still improved. It’s long been thought that there was little to gain from rehab after half a year.
“We now have evidence, for the first time, that a prolonged course of therapy will have benefits,” said Dr. Jeffrey Saver, director of the stroke center at the University of California, Los Angeles. “For virtually everyone, we should be doing more intensive therapy than we are.”