ABSTRACT

Background and Objectives: Functional recovery is one of the major causes of concern in stroke subjects with performing activities of daily living. Upper limb impairment affects the performance of many activities of daily living. Our major objective of the study is to investigate the effectiveness of the individual and combined effect of motor relearning programme and Thermal stimulation to improve upper limb motor function.

Methods: A random sampling method is used to select subjects with right MCA stroke. Thirty subjects were included and randomly divided into three groups by using lottery method, with ten in each group A, B and C. Group A, B and C had underwent a MRP,Thermal Stimulation and combination of these two techniques respectively. The outcomes are measured by the MMAS, and STREAM scale.

Results: Analysis of variance has been used to find the significance of study parameters between different groups. Paired t’ test has been used to find the significance of the  study within each group. According to Results Group A shows better improvement than group B and It shows that upper limb motor function improved significantly higher in Group C (P<0.001**) when compared to Group A and Group B in MMAS and STREAM scale evaluation.

Conclusion: The present study indicates that physiotherapy treatment showed that the use of individual effect of motor relearning programme is more effective than Thermal Stimulation technique but the combined effect of these two techniques is more effective than the individual effect can bring out significant changes in the upper limb motor function of  MCA Stroke subjects.

Keywords: Stroke, Motor Relearning Progrm,Thermal Stimulation, Stroke Rehabilitation Assessment of Movement (STREAM), Modified Motor Assessment Scalele (MMAS).