Stroke and Appropriate Physical Therapy

Cerebrovascular disease or stroke is a disease that causes paresis and paralysis. It causes patients to lose their ability to control various organs to the point of immobilization of such an extent that disability, paresis or paralysis can occur.

 

Physical medicine and rehabilitation can help restore physical performance to allow patients to return as much as possible to normal living.

 

1. Mobility: Muscle weakness can affect sitting, standing and walking abilities. Therefore, patients should receive physical therapy to restore the movements of their arm and leg muscles to boost muscle strength and balance, being trained on sitting, standing and walking including various other activities of daily living like eating, putting on clothes and showering.

 

2. Swallowing: In some patients, they experience difficulty in eating and swallowing in the initial stages, and they might even have to be put on a feeding tube. As a result, patients have to be evaluated for training on how to eat and swallow water to allow them to drink and eat safely upon returning home. 

 

3. Communication: Stroke patients whose abnormality occurs on the left lobe of the brain often experience difficulty regulating speech, comprehension and language recognition, making them lose their ability to communicate. As a result, they should receive rehabilitation that teaches them to speak and understand and comprehend language to allow them to communicate as accurately and as much as possible.

 

4. Other complications: Stroke patients frequently experience other symptoms like muscle rigidity, locked joints, shoulder joint dislocation, etc. Therefore, patients need to undergo physical therapy in order to treat and prevent complications. For example, muscle rigidity can be minimized by using physical therapy devices, massages or muscle stretches and movements, posture adjustments or use of other devices that reduce rigidity.

 

1. It can help restore physical performance and reduce pain in various organs of the body to improve mobility and improve the strength of damaged organs.

 

2. It can support patients in returning to performing their daily activities as normal including teaching them how to protect themselves from future injuries that might cause further physical and movement deterioration.

 

Patients who suffered from injuries or who are suffering from disability or movement difficulties should seek physical therapy in order to treat and restore their performance in addition to improving their health and preventing future risk of recurrence of injury. Some of these patients include the following:

 

These are patients who experienced injuries that caused pain and decreased ability to move. Usually, the symptoms occur to tissues like muscles, tendons, ligaments, joints and bones, so the treatment goal of this group of patients is to alleviate pain symptoms by using physical therapy tools, stretching, massages or bending movements to help increase muscle elasticity to allow for greater movement, while exercise can be used to promote tissue strength to allow the patient to return to normal living, in addition to preventing injuries from recurring.

 

This group of patients often experience problems associated with muscle weakness, breathing difficulty, balance problems, difficulty standing or abnormal walking, so the treatment goal is focused on restoring physical performance in terms of strength, breathing, balance, standing and walking to allow patients to return to daily living or socialization as normal or as near as possible to normal or to return to living by use of assistive devices, and medical or multidisciplinary personnel might be needed in order to plan physical rehabilitation.