DEVELOPING AN EXERCISE VIDEO BANK FOR STROKE SURVIVORS THROUGH A COMMUNITY-BASED REHABILITATION PROJECT IN VIETNAM

¹University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City, Physiotherapy, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

Background: The demand for post-stroke patient rehabilitation in Vietnam has increased significantly. It is crucial to sustain the treatment on patients even after discharge so they can recover and reintegrate back into society. To address this issue, a project whose purpose is to establish a bank of exercise videos as treatment instructions has been executed. This bank potentially enables the democratization of rehabilitation treatment because it makes the treatment accessible to all types of patients, especially those living in rural areas.

Purpose: This project aims to establish a bank of exercise videos serving as treatment instructions for post-stroke patients in Vietnam. This bank of videos can support therapists by empowering patients and their respective families to have a more active role in their respective rehabilitation programs. Thus, patients can experience a faster recovery rate to become more independent in their activities of daily living (ADLs).

Methods: The bank consists of 80 videos containing the following topics: upper limb, transition, displacement, and ADLs rehabilitation. To assess the efficacy of the video bank, the team conducted a study on 20 patients with moderate severity of stroke according to the National Institute of Health Stroke Scale from five hospitals in Vietnam. All subjects were provided with one-month treatment program with videos. These videos served the following purposes: (1) were sent to patients so they can learn by observing; (2) were employed as treatment instructions by the therapists during every telerehabilitation meeting session; (3) served as self-exercising lessons for the patients at home. The team employed the Barthel Index (BI) to evaluate before and after the intervention and used the Paired T-test to review the results. Linear mixed effects (LME) model was employed to identify changes in the BI scores including several prognostic factors such as age, gender.

Results: The treatment program with the video bank included demonstrated a statistically significant difference in patients' ADL performance. The mean BI score, in the beginning, was 43.5 with a standard deviation (stdev) of 12.9; after one month, the mean was 77.5 with a stdev of 17.5 (p< 0.0001). Besides, the results indicated a decrease in the adjusted BI score as the age factor increased and there is no statistically significant difference in the BI score between men and women.

Conclusions: During the project, the video bank demonstrated its efficacy as community-based rehabilitation program evidenced by the post-treatment results. The video bank can also serve as a great contribution to the general treatment of post-stroke patients in Vietnam. The intervention improved the patients' capability on ADLs after stroke, and such improvement was influenced by age. Additional studies with a larger sample size are required to evaluate the efficacy of the proposed intervention program with greater accuracy.

Implications: This project shows that the application of exercise video bank to provide treatment has positive outcomes for stroke patients. This form of intervention can be applied to increase the accessibility of rehabilitation in the community for patients. From this project, exercise video bank should be deeply studied and expanded in the clinical context in Vietnam.

Funding acknowledgements: No Funding

Keywords:
Community-based rehabilitation
Exercise video bank
Stroke

Topics:
Community based rehabilitation
Neurology: stroke

Did this work require ethics approval? Yes

Institution: University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City

Committee: Research Ethics Committee

Ethics number: 21431- ĐHYD