Shaukat Ali, Muhammad Farrukh Shahzad.
The effectiveness of sustained stretching in post stroke upper limb spasticity.
Int J Rehab Sci Jan ;01(01):30-4.

Objective: To establish the effectiveness of sustained stretching in reduction of post stroke upper limb spasticity. Methods: A case series of 8 weeks duration with 5 sample size was conducted on home based patients in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Case series describing the outcomes of individual patients with spasticity were treated with sustained stretching. The post-treatment effectiveness of stretching protocol was assessed by reference to the pre-treatment Modified Ashworth Scale (MAS), passive range of motion (ROM) on fortnightly basis. Five stroke patients aged between 45 and 65 years with spasticity were included in this case series. All patients were treated with sustained stretching from 1 to 2 minutes, 12 times per session four times a week to minimize spasticity. Results: It was observed that spasticity decreased in two out of five cases with fair improvement on Modified Ashworth Scale (MAS), passive range of motion (ROM).Two out of 5 patients improved with MAS score from 2 to +1. While only one patient showed improvement in passive ROM. Conclusion: The findings of this study suggest that sustained stretching plays a little role in reduction of spasticity in terms of improvement in range of motion (ROM) and improvement on Modified Ashworth Scale (MAS). Although, there were certain limitations because of small sample size however, further research is needed such as RCTs to generalize the results.

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