Monika Žilionytė, Jurgita Savickaitė, Andrius Kederys, Lina Varžaitytė

Abstract

Aim: to overview strong evidence-based literature, related to mirror therapy (MT) efficiency on patients after head brain stroke. Research material and methods: systemic analysis was grounded by academic articles, found in the following databases: PubMed, BioMedCentral, Tylor &Francis, Cohrane Library, Science Direct. Search of academic articles has been performed according to the strategies, adapted to each database. The following keywords have been applied: “mirror therapy”, “rehabilitation”, “stroke”, “upper limb”, “recovery of function”, “mirror movement”, “phantom limb pain “, “mirror visual feedback”, “mirror neurons system”. Systemic summary contained random controlled or not controlled researches “before and after”, published in 2008-2016 in English. The abovementioned assessed MT impact on motoric and sensory functions of paralysed limb, also pain intensity and reorganization of an associated brain cortex. Results: systemic analysis involved 11 researches, divided into two groups: respondents, applied with a standard and MT and a control group, applied with a standard therapy only. The majority of researches were based by 1 month MT application. The results were assessed before the therapy and after it. The analysis of 11 articles has shown that the MT groups featured significant improvement of motoric function of the paralysed limb, also increased movement capacity and decreased pain. Conclusions: MT increased brain activity at ipsilateral motoric cortex and somatosensory zone, also promotes reorganization of associated cortex thus helping to gain better results for the patients after non-dominant hemisphere stroke, decreases after-stroke pain and improves movement capacity of limbs. MT is efficient not only treating patients with acute and after acute stroke, but also those with chronic one.

Keyword(s): mirror therapy; stroke; pain syndrome; limb paralysis; sensor function; motoric function.
DOI: 10.5200/sm-hs.2016.115
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