title: True functional ability of chronic stroke patients.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  There is a paucity of information regarding visuospatial (VS) and visuomotor (VM) task performance in patients with chronic right fronto-parietal lobe stroke, as the majority of knowledge to date in this realm has been gleaned from acute stroke patients. The goal of this paper is to determine how VS and VM performance in chronic stroke patients compare to the performance of healthy participants.
  
  
  METHODS
  Nine patients with stroke involving the right fronto-parietal region were evaluated against match controls on neuropsychological tests and a computerized visuomotor assessment task.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Initial evaluation indicated that performance between participant groups were relatively similar on all measures. However, an in-depth analysis of variability revealed observable differences between participant groups. In addition, large effect sizes were also observed supporting the theory that using only conventional examination (e.g., p-values) measures may result in miss-identifying crucial stroke-related differences.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Through conventional evaluation methods it would appear that the chronic stroke participants had made significant functional gains relatively to a control group many years post-stroke. It was shown that the type of evaluation used is essential to identifying group differences. Thus, supplementary methods of evaluation are required to unmask the true functional ability of individuals many years post-stroke.
authors: L.C. Campbell Cognitive Neurology Research Unit, Toronto, ON, Canada. tippett@unbc.ca
authors: William J
authors: WJ
authors: Tippett
authors: Lisa D
authors: LD
authors: Alexander
authors: Mireille N
authors: MN
authors: Rizkalla
authors: Lauren E
authors: LE
authors: Sergio
authors: Sandra E
authors: SE
authors: Black
mesh_terms: D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002908:Chronic Disease; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D007206:Individuality; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009048:Motor Skills / Q000502:physiology; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D020521:Stroke / Q000503:physiopathology*; D000071939:Stroke Rehabilitation; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult