Effects of Short-term Intensive Rehabilitation in Patients with Ambulatory Spinocerebellar Degeneration：Total Score and Sub-score Change of Scale for the Assessment and Rating of Ataxia / The Japanese Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine

ABSTRACT

Objective：The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a four-week short-term intensive rehabilitation on ataxia in patients with ambulatory spinocerebellar degeneration (SCD), using the Scale for the Assessment and Rating of Ataxia (SARA) total score and sub-score.Methods：This study included 23 SCD patients；we considered those with a SARA gait score of＜3 points. Our program included a one-hour training session with individualized instructions and a one-hour self-balance training session. Additionally, occupational or speech-language-hearing therapy was performed for one hour daily. Our program was conducted five days weekly for four weeks. We assessed the SARA total score and sub-score findings immediately, before the first and after the last interventions.Results：The SARA total, gait, stance, and heel-shin scores showed more significant improvement after intervention than before intervention (p＜0.05). The other SARA sub-scores were not significantly different between “before and after” interventions.Conclusion：The four-week short-term intensive rehabilitation on ataxia in patients with ambulatory spinocerebellar degeneration improved the SARA total score and ataxia of the trunk and lower limbs.