Stakeholders' Experiences Using Videoconferencing for a Group-Based Stroke Intervention During COVID-19: A Thematic Analysis.

IMPORTANCE: Guidance is limited for training protocols that support stakeholders who are new to participating in telerehabilitation interventions using videoconferencing software. OBJECTIVE: To explore stakeholders' experiences participating in a group-based intervention during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic using a videoconferencing software (Zoom). DESIGN: Ad hoc exploratory thematic analysis. SETTING: Community-based telerehabilitation. PARTICIPANTS: Stakeholders included group members (n = 8) who were low-income adults with chronic stroke (≥3 mo) and mild to moderate disability (National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale ≤ 16), group leaders (n = 4), and study staff (n = 4). INTERVENTION: Group-based intervention, ENGAGE, delivered using videoconferencing technology. ENGAGE blends social learning and guided discovery to facilitate community and social participation. OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Semistructured interviews. RESULTS: Stakeholders included group members (ages 26-81 yr), group leaders (ages 32-71 yr), and study staff (ages 23-55 yr). Group members characterized ENGAGE as learning, doing, and connecting with others who shared their experience. Stakeholders identified social advantages and disadvantages to the videoconferencing environment. Attitudes toward technology, past technology experiences, the amount of time allotted for training, group size, physical environments, navigation of technology disruptions, and design of the intervention workbook were facilitators for some and barriers for others. Social support facilitated technology access and intervention engagement. Stakeholders recommended training structure and content. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Tailored training protocols may support stakeholders who are participating in telerehabilitation interventions using new software or devices. Future studies that identify specific tailoring variables will advance the development of telerehabilitation training protocols. What This Article Adds: These findings provide stakeholder-identified barriers and facilitators, in addition to stakeholder-informed recommendations, for technology training protocols that may support uptake of telerehabilitation in occupational therapy.

Automated Fidelity Assessment for Strategy Training in Inpatient Rehabilitation using Natural Language Processing.

Strategy training is a multidisciplinary rehabilitation approach that teaches skills to reduce disability among those with cognitive impairments following a stroke. Strategy training has been shown in randomized, controlled clinical trials to be a more feasible and efficacious intervention for promoting independence than traditional rehabilitation approaches. A standardized fidelity assessment is used to measure adherence to treatment principles by examining guided and directed verbal cues in video recordings of rehabilitation sessions. Although the fidelity assessment for detecting guided and directed verbal cues is valid and feasible for single-site studies, it can become labor intensive, time consuming, and expensive in large, multi-site pragmatic trials. To address this challenge to widespread strategy training implementation, we leveraged natural language processing (NLP) techniques to automate the strategy training fidelity assessment, i.e., to automatically identify guided and directed verbal cues from video recordings of rehabilitation sessions. We developed a rule-based NLP algorithm, a long-short term memory (LSTM) model, and a bidirectional encoder representation from transformers (BERT) model for this task. The best performance was achieved by the BERT model with a 0.8075 F1-score. This BERT model was verified on an external validation dataset collected from a separate major regional health system and achieved an F1 score of 0.8259, which shows that the BERT model generalizes well. The findings from this study hold widespread promise in psychology and rehabilitation intervention research and practice.

Rest-Activity Rhythm Characteristics Associated With Depression Symptoms in Stroke Survivors.

OBJECTIVE: To examine which 24-hour rest-activity rhythm (RAR) characteristics are associated with depression symptoms in stroke survivors. DESIGN: Cross-sectional observational study examining associations of RAR characteristics with the presence of depression symptoms adjusting for age, sex, race, and medical comorbidity. SETTING: Community setting. PARTICIPANTS: Stroke survivors: (1) recruited locally (N women=35, N men=28) and (2) a nationally representative probability sample (the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey [NHANES]; N women=156, N men=124). INTERVENTIONS: None. MEASUREMENTS: Objective RAR characteristics derived from accelerometer recordings including activity onset/offset times and non-parametric measures of RAR strength (relative amplitude), stability (interdaily stability), and fragmentation (intradaily variability). The presence of depression symptoms was categorized using Patient Health Questionnaire scores. RESULTS: In both samples, the only RAR characteristic associated with depression symptoms was intradaily variability (fragmentation): local sample, odds ratio=1.96 [95% confidence interval=1.05-3.63]; NHANES sample, odds ratio=1.34, [95% confidence interval=1.01-1.78]). In the NHANES sample, which included both mild and moderate/severe depression, the association between 24-hour sleep-wake fragmentation and depression symptoms was driven by moderate-to-severe cases. CONCLUSIONS: Stroke survivors with higher levels of RAR fragmentation were more likely to have depression symptoms in both samples. These findings have implications, given prior studies in general samples linking RAR fragmentation with future depression and dementia risk. Research is needed to establish the potential consequences, mechanisms, and modifiability of RAR fragmentation in stroke survivors.

How does culture influence the implementation of strategy training in stroke rehabilitation? A rapid ethnographic study of therapist perspectives in Taiwan and the United States.

PURPOSE: Strategy training is a promising stroke rehabilitation intervention commonly delivered in Western countries. We examined the perspectives of rehabilitation therapists who have delivered strategy training in Taiwan and the United States to understand the influence of culture on strategy training implementation. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this rapid ethnographic study, the maximum variation sampling approach was used to recruit seven therapists in Taiwan and seven therapists in the United States with experience delivering strategy training. Data was collected from multiple sources, including interviews, study documents, therapist notes, and reflective memos. Interviews with the recruited therapists in Taiwan and the United States were conducted in Mandarin and English, respectively. Data were analyzed using a constant comparative approach. RESULTS: The following two themes were generated: (1) differences between conventional rehabilitation and strategy training, namely that conventional rehabilitation is therapist-directed and emphasizes impairment reduction, whereas strategy training empowers clients and focuses on real-life generalization, and (2) challenges in implementing strategy training in practice, including difficulty in achieving client buy-in and disengagement. CONCLUSIONS: Therapists from both countries shared similar perspectives on the perceived advantages of strategy training, such as enhancing client empowerment and engagement, and the generalization of strategies. Family involvement was more prominently discussed by therapists in Taiwan than by those in the United States.IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATIONStrategy training differs from conventional rehabilitation in its emphasis on clients' life participation and empowerment, generalization of strategies, and enhancement of their engagement, confidence, and problem-solving skills.Therapists may face challenges related to client buy-in and disengagement as well as difficulties in establishing a therapeutic rapport at the beginning of strategy training because clients have different expectations from those of conventional rehabilitation.Cultural differences in norms and expectations and the clinical experiences of therapists may influence the delivery of strategy training to clients.Family support may influence the success of strategy training.Thoughtful conversations to reach a mutual understanding regarding the expectations of strategy training among clients, family, and rehabilitation practitioners are necessary prior to implementing strategy training.

Detection of Stroke-Induced Visual Neglect and Target Response Prediction Using Augmented Reality and Electroencephalography.

We aim to build a system incorporating electroencephalography (EEG) and augmented reality (AR) that is capable of identifying the presence of visual spatial neglect (SN) and mapping the estimated neglected visual field. An EEG-based brain-computer interface (BCI) was used to identify those spatiospectral features that best detect participants with SN among stroke survivors using their EEG responses to ipsilesional and contralesional visual stimuli. Frontal-central delta and alpha, frontal-parietal theta, Fp1 beta, and left frontal gamma were found to be important features for neglect detection. Additionally, temporal analysis of the responses shows that the proposed model is accurate in detecting potentially neglected targets. These targets were predicted using common spatial patterns as the feature extraction algorithm and regularized discriminant analysis combined with kernel density estimation for classification. With our preliminary results, our system shows promise for reliably detecting the presence of SN and predicting visual target responses in stroke patients with SN.

Stroke Rehabilitation: Recent Progress and Future Promise.

Significant advancements in acute stroke medical management have changed stroke rehabilitation. In addition, an ever-changing health care ecosystem and heightened awareness of continued and new challenges requires that the occupational therapy profession consider new, innovative, and pragmatic approaches to measurement, intervention, and health services research, and clinical practice. The profession must elevate the focus and rigor of research examining occupation and participation after stroke, and their associations with health. Intervention research must progress beyond early phase pilot studies to a robust collection of meaningful large multisite studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of our interventions and the effectiveness of wide-scale implementation to ensure quality and consistent delivery of evidence-based practices in occupational therapy. These studies must address the accessibility of these practices for all people who have sustained stroke, and particularly those people who are most vulnerable to inaccessible stroke rehabilitation service delivery systems.

Lesion location may attenuate response to strategy training in acute stroke.

BACKGROUND: Strategy training, a rehabilitation intervention, reduces disability and improves functional skills associated with goal-directed behavior. Stroke lesions impacting selected ventromedial regions of interest associated with initiation of goal-directed behavior may attenuate intervention response. If so, strategy training may not be optimal for people with stroke lesions in these regions. OBJECTIVE: To examine whether ventromedial regions of interest attenuate changes in disability status attributed to strategy training. DESIGN: Secondary analysis of data from two randomized controlled clinical trials. SETTING: Inpatient stroke rehabilitation. PARTICIPANTS: People with acute stroke diagnosis and available diagnostic studies enrolled in inpatient rehabilitation randomized controlled studies between 2009 and 2017. INTERVENTION: Participants were randomized to strategy training or a control condition in addition to the usual care during inpatient rehabilitation. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Diagnostic magnetic resonance imaging studies were retrieved from electronic medical records, and stroke lesion location was characterized by a neuroradiologist. Intervention response was defined by Functional Independence Measure change scores of 22 points or greater. RESULTS: Only 186 of 275 participants had diagnostic studies available; 13 patients showed no apparent lesion on their diagnostic study. Among 173 cases, 156 had complete data at discharge (strategy training n = 71, control n = 85). Twenty-five cases had a lesion within a region of interest (strategy training n = 14, control n = 11). Intervention response was attenuated in the strategy training group for those with lesions in regions of interest [χ2 (1, n = 71) = 4.60, P = .03], but not for those in the control group [Fisher exact test, n = 85, P = .19). CONCLUSIONS: Lesions in the ventromedial regions of interest may attenuate response to strategy training.

Fine-tuning and Personalization of EEG-based Neglect Detection in Stroke Patients.

Spatial neglect (SN) is a neurological disorder that causes inattention to visual stimuli in the contralesional visual field, stemming from unilateral brain injury such as stroke. The current gold standard method of SN assessment, the conventional Behavioral Inattention Test (BIT-C), is highly variable and inconsistent in its results. In our previous work, we built an augmented reality (AR)-based BCI to overcome the limitations of the BIT-C and classified between neglected and non-neglected targets with high accuracy. Our previous approach included personalization of the neglect detection classifier but the process required rigorous retraining from scratch and time-consuming feature selection for each participant. Future steps of our work will require rapid personalization of the neglect classifier; therefore, in this paper, we investigate fine-tuning of a neural network model to hasten the personalization process.

Impact of telemedicine implementation in thrombolytic use for acute ischemic stroke: the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center telestroke network experience.

BACKGROUND: Intravenous thrombolysis is the only therapy for acute ischemic stroke that is approved by the US Food and Drug Association. The use of telemedicine in stroke makes it possible to bring the expertise of academic stroke centers to underserved areas, potentially increasing the quality of stroke care. METHODS: All consecutive admissions for stroke were reviewed for 1 year before telemedicine implementation and for variable periods thereafter. A retrospective review identified 2588 admissions for acute stroke between March 2005 and December 2008 at 12 hospitals participating in a telestroke network, including 919 patients before telemedicine was available and 1669 patients after telemedicine was available. The primary outcome measure was the rate of intravenous tissue plasminogen activator (IV tPA) use before and after telemedicine implementation. RESULTS: One hundred thirty-nine patients received IV tPA in both study phases, with 26 (2.8%) patients treated before starting telemedicine and 113 (6.8%) after starting telemedicine (P < .001). Incorrect treatment decisions occurred 7 times (0.39%), with 2 (0.2%) pretelemedicine and 5 (0.3%) posttelemedicine (P = .70). Arrivals within 3 hours from symptom onset were more frequent in the posttelemedicine compared to the pretelemedicine phases (55 [6%] vs 159 [9.5%]; P = .002). Among the patients treated with IV tPA, symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage occurred in 2 patients (1 [10.7%] pretelemedicine vs 1 [1.8%] posttelemedicine; P = .34). CONCLUSIONS: Telestroke implementation was associated with an increased rate of thrombolytic use in remote hospitals within the telemedicine network.

Disability in late-life major depression: patterns of self-reported task abilities, task habits, and observed task performance.

This article describes patterns of concordance/discordance between self-reported abilities ("can do") and habits ("does do") and observed task performance of daily living tasks in three groups of older adults: late life depression with mild cognitive impairment (n=53), late life depression without mild cognitive impairment (n=64), and non-depressed, cognitively normal controls (n=31). Self-reported data were gathered by interview in participants' homes, followed by observation of task performance. Significant differences in the patterns of response were found between controls and respondents with both late life depression and mild cognitive impairment for the cognitive instrumental activities, and between the two depressed groups and controls for the physical instrumental activities. For both sets of activities, controls exhibited the greatest overestimation of task performance. No differences were found among the groups for the less complex functional mobility and personal care tasks. However, for the more complex instrumental activities, concordance was close to, or less than, chance. The findings led us to conclude that when performance testing is not feasible, self-reports of functional status that focus on habits may be more accurate than those that focus on abilities.

Measuring stroke survivors' functional status independence: five perspectives.

An understandable measure to describe disabilities after stroke is important for clinical practice; practitioners often use multiple measures that contain different scoring systems and scales to rate activities of daily living (ADL) independence. We compared the construct of independence in five measures used with stroke survivors. The measures evaluated independence of the stroke survivors somewhat differently. The Rasch analysis Partial Credit Model converted items from these measures to a single metric, yielding an item difficulty hierarchy of all items from the measures. Data from the measures should be interpreted carefully because other concepts or constructs in addition to ADL independence are included in some of the measures. Rasch diagnostics regarding construct validity and reliability of the combined measures also indicated that these measures are not interchangeable. Although the items of the combined ADL measures were unidimensional, they measured independence from multiple perspectives, and the scale of the combined measures was not linear.