Relations Between the Level Upper Limb Paresis Recovery in Output of the Hospital Unit Continued Care and Rehabilitation and Its Level of Use in Lifestyle at Three and Six Months

Adults after stroke will be recruited at post-acute rehabilitation discharge. Three evaluation times will be undertaken: at discharge, three and six months after discharge. Evaluation battery will focus on the three level of the Functioning International Classification: affected upper limb level of strength, proprioception and level of functional recovery, hemineglect, depression, cognition status, and activity level by doing a standardised instrumental task of daily living, and level of participation questionnaire. General characteristics will be taken into account: Age, social status, laterality.

At six months, the spontaneous level of affected upper arm use in daily living will also be assessed using accelerometers.

As the main aim of the study is to build a prediction model, the study size is calculated to observe a minimal number of events by potentially predictive variable. We consider here 7.5 events by independent variable (Vittinghof and McCulloch, 2007) and eight independent variables. According to literature review, we estimated that 35% of adults included in this study would spontaneously use their affected upper arm in activities of daily living six months after discharge. According to these data and considering 10% of protocol deviations, we calculated that 192 subjects will have to be included in the study. The inclusion duration will be 30 months.