Effect of six week mirror therapy on rate of spasm and upper limb function in people with cerebrovascular accident stroke

Introduction: The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of six weeks of mirror therapy on the spasm rate and upper limb function of patients with stroke.
Method: The subjects of this research 60 person were stroke sufferers with an age range of 30 to 60 years who referred to the clinics of Tehran University of Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, who were selected as subjects in a targeted and available manner to participate in this research period. Before and after the exercise protocol of the Modified Ashworth, Fogel Meyer tests were obtained from the all subjects. The schedule and protocol of the six-week exercises consisted of six steps, which were performed for about 30 to 45 minutes by the mirror therapy group, and the control group performed regular rehabilitation exercises. In this research, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to determine the normality of the data distribution.Levine's test was used to determine the homogeneity of variances in the research variables and to analyze the data, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used, and Bonferroni's test was used to determine pairwise differences.
Results: After mirror therapy intervention, there was a significant difference in the post-test upper limb function (P=0.024). However, there was no significant difference in the post-test of spasm in the control and mirror therapy groups (p> 0.05).
Conclusion: The results of this research showed that six weeks of mirror therapy exercises made a significant change in the performance of the participating male and female patients, but no significant effect was observed in the spasm rate in stroke patients. Due to the cheapness and convenience of this method, mirror therapy can be used in the rehabilitation period of patients who have suffered paralysis after a stroke.