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The stronger side
School of Health Professions students are engaged in valuable research in a variety of areas. These stories represent the efforts of students from the Department of Occupational Therapy and Occupational Science.
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After a stroke, the body’s weaker side often retreats, letting the stronger limbs carry the load. An occupational therapy clinical assistant professor and her students won’t stand for that. They think the weaker side can improve with the proper encouragement…and a little restraint. Research is ongoing but Giuli Krug and her students are helping stroke survivors young and not so young live life to the fullest with their whole body. Their constraint induced therapy is the only treatment of its kind currently offered in mid-Missouri.
Angie Conrow is only 30 years old and looks to be the picture of health. Two years ago, however, the mother of three small children had a stroke on the left side of her brain that affected the right side of her body. After her hospitalization and initial rehab she started participating in Krug’s research.
With a mitt and sling constraining her left hand and arm, Conrow is forced to work her weaker right side. Her progress has been typical of what Krug and her research students have seen. “The research has consistently shown that both traditional (inpatient) and modified (outpatient) constraint-induced protocols are effective in increasing arm movement and function, and thus far we have had similar positive results with the modified protocol we have designed,” Krug says.
The restraints are used five hours a day, five days a week for six weeks. The clients wear the restraints to remind them to do home activities to use and strengthen the weaker side. Visits to the OT clinic in the School of Health Professions incorporate some repetitive exercises to improve fine and gross motor skills and typical home activities like hanging laundry or making a bed.
The constraint induced therapy was publicized by a story in the Columbia Daily Tribune. That story was picked up by the Associated Press and carried by other Missouri papers and some national and international Web sites. One client drove twice a week from Springfield, Mo. for the treatment and Krug has had calls from other faraway places. “I have received calls from stroke survivors and their loved ones from Illinois, Oklahoma, and even Florida who are interested in participating in constraint-induced therapy and have been unable to access it in their own communities”
OT graduate students Whitney Henderson and Allison Rhodes, both class of ’08, worked on the research project last year. OT Class of ’09 graduate students Alex Roark and Allison Covert are helping with the research now. “Throughout the intervention phase of this project I have seen the gains in movement and ability that the participants are making,” Covert says, “and it is so exciting for me because we are contributing to the research that says people can make functional changes even years later.”