LSVT BIG for Chronic Stroke Rehabilitation: a Single-Case Experimental Design

Over 700 000 Canadians are living with the effects of stroke. Approximately 60% of people living with the effects of stroke need help with every day activities and 84% are limited in the activities which they would like to participate in. Much research has focused on interventions for acute and sub-acute rehabilitation but it is also known that gains can still be made in the chronic stage. Among common rehabilitation interventions to reduce impairment, there is moderate evidence of effectiveness of constraint induced movement therapy (CIMT) and mirror therapy and weak evidence of effectiveness of repetitive task training. However, positive effects on impairment do not necessarily carryover into activities of daily living.

Therefore, an intervention program with a goal of improvement in occupational performance outside of the clinical setting, one that targets everyday activities and participant selected activities, would be a valuable tool for occupational therapy post stroke. The objective of this study was to explore whether the LSVT BIG® program, an intervention targeting participant-identified functional goals which includes strategies to encourage generalization to other tasks, could be applicable to the rehabilitation of the chronic effects of stroke.

LSVT BIG is a time limited, high intensity rehabilitation program designed to be used by occupational therapists or physiotherapists to target Parkinson's disease motor symptoms of bradykinesia and hypokinesia, in an outpatient environment, with a goal of improving function. This intervention involves exercises and repetitive practice of patient-selected activities with a focus on big (increased amplitude) movements. It is believed that this will lead to normally paced and sized movements which will generalize to untrained activities.

Although Parkinson's disease and stroke have different pathological mechanisms, the elements in the LSVT BIG program are based on the same neuroplasticity and motor learning principles that form the basis for stroke rehabilitation methods. What is novel, however, is the focus on amplitude and just one cue, 'big', for all difficult movement situations, potentially increasing generalizability outside of the clinical setting and trained activities.

The LSVT BIG program uses motor learning principles of blocked practice, serial practice and elements of random practice (varying environmental factors), extrinsic feedback (including verbal feedback, modeling, shaping and focus on knowledge of results) as well as a single external, knowledge of results focused cue 'big' to encourage adaptation, recalibration of the internal motor program of the movement, and transfer to other tasks. LSVT BIG also respects the neuroplasticity principles of intensity, repetition, specificity and saliency The aim of this study is to begin to explore the effectiveness of LSVT BIG in late stroke rehabilitation.