The effects of long opponens splint on stroke patients

• Main Authors: Liang-Chaun Pan, 潘亮全
• Other Authors: Min-Sheng Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/38803015040882253436

碩士 === 雲林科技大學 === 工業工程與管理研究所碩士班 === 98 === Background: The primary goal of occupational therapy is to improve the stroke patients’ function of activity of daily life (ADL), because stroke affects people and makes their inconvenient life. Hand function is an important link to ADL, many activities depends on hands. Splint is a common tool in hand therapy, but there is limited use on stroke patients to enhance hand function, and few literatures on it. Purpose: This study utilized long opponens splint as a intervention tool to investigate whether this splint improve the function of upper extremity, hand and ADL on stroke patients. Methods: Twenty-six subjects between 40 to 80 years old with stroke were selected and divided into the splint group (experiment group: 13 subjects) and non-splint group (control group: 13 subjects). Both groups received the same hand function training activities at the frequency of 30 minutes per session and 2 sessions per week in the period of 8 weeks. Subjects were evaluated their function of the upper extremity, hand and ADL by five assessment tools before and after 4 weeks training and after 8 weeks training. Results: The improvement is better in experiment group compared with control group after 8 weeks intervention of splint. In experiment group, the function of upper extremity, hand and ADL were significantly improved after training. Conclusion: The long opponens splint could improve the function of upper extremity, hand and ADL effectively, It has a great potential to be utilized as a hand function rehabilitation tool on stroke patients. It could expend the application range of splint on stroke patients, and help stroke patients regaining normal life as soon as possible.