Training of Muscles Affected By The Upper Motor Neuron Syndrome
Muscles affected by the Upper Motor Neuron Syndrome have many potential features of altered performance including weakness, decreased motor control, clonus (a series of involuntary rapid muscle contractions), exaggerated deep tendon reflexes, spasticity and decreased endurance. The term "spasticity" is often erroneously used interchangeably with Upper Motor Neuron Syndrome, and it is not unusual to see patients labeled as spastic who demonstrate an array of UMN findings.
It has been estimated that approximately 65% of individuals develop spasticity following stroke, and studies have revealed that approximately 40% of stroke victims may still have spasticity at 12 months post-stroke. The changes in muscle tone probably result from alterations in the balance of inputs from reticulospinal and other descending pathways to the motor and interneuronal circuits of the spinal cord, and the absence of an intact corticospinal system. In other words, there is damage to the part of the brain or spinal cord that controls voluntary movement.
Various means are available for the treatment of the effects of the Upper Motor Neuron Syndrome. These include: exercises to improve strength, control and endurance, nonpharmacologic therapies, oral drug therapy, intrathecal drug therapy, injections, and surgery. Researchers do not believe that treating spasticity is worthwhile. A letter to the editor of Stroke magazine. Spasticity After Stroke: Why Bother? William M. Landau, MD However, the perseverative preoccupation of professional neurologists and therapists with the purpose of overpowering the spasticity ogre seems to be an endemic, intractably-taught delusion that afflicts both scholars and clinicians. Another group of researchers writing in Movement Disorder Virtual University Incidence and Consequences of Spasticity After Stroke
The authors conclude, “spasticity seems to contribute to motor impairments and activity limitations and may be a severe problem for some patients after stroke,” but, they note, “Our findings support the opinion…that the focus on spasticity in stroke rehabilitation is out of step with its clinical importance. In a survey done by the National Stroke Association, however, while 58 percent of survivors in the survey experience spasticity, only 51 percent of those have received treatment for this condition.
Read more about this topic: Stroke Recovery
Famous quotes containing the words training, muscles, affected, upper, motor and/or syndrome:
“The sum and substance of female education in America, as in England, is training women to consider marriage as the sole object in life, and to pretend that they do not think so.”
—Harriet Martineau (1802–1876)
“As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“The great war that broke so suddenly upon the world two years ago, and which has swept up within its flame so great a part of the civilized world, has affected us very profoundly.... With its causes and its objects we are not concerned. The obscure fountains from which its stupendous flood has burst we are not interested to search for or explore.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Give me the islands of the upper air,
all mountains
and the towering mountain trees.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“The motor idles.
Over the immense upland
the pulse of their blossoming
thunders through us.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“Women are taught that their main goal in life is to serve others—first men, and later, children. This prescription leads to enormous problems, for it is supposed to be carried out as if women did not have needs of their own, as if one could serve others without simultaneously attending to one’s own interests and desires. Carried to its “perfection,” it produces the martyr syndrome or the smothering wife and mother.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)