"Have you ever tried to read a newspaper with one hand?" asked Leslie McClellan. The 68-year-old man from Gainesville, Fla., knows that it's truly an exercise in frustration.
Reading a newspaper is just one of life's daily activities that is a challenge for the two-thirds of the 4 million American stroke survivors who are left physically impaired. (Former President Gerald R. Ford suffered what was called a small stroke Wednesday, but doctors said he does not seem to be significantly impaired).
Many stroke patients find that buttoning a shirt, preparing and eating a meal and driving a car are among the things that have to be relearned.
But researchers have developed two new techniques for stroke rehabilitation. Each is designed to restore function to a disabled arm by training the brain to send it certain signals.
The techniques, according to the researchers, seem to strengthen and reorganize the portion of the brain damaged by stroke. Both therapies support emerging brain research suggesting the adult brain remains much more plastic, or able to reorganize and renew, than was previously thought.
Until now, the predominant therapy for stroke victims has been to teach them how to compensate for the loss of a limb by using the uninjured one.
Recent findings suggest that the two new techniques--called constraint-induced movement therapy and muscular-triggered electrical stimulation--can restore a substantial amount of movement to the damaged limb, even years after a stroke.
McClellan, for example, was impaired for four years before electrical stimulation improved the functioning of his left arm so much that he returned to work part time.
"It's changed my whole life," he said. "Driving a car is so much easier, using the turn signals, holding a newspaper . . . I'm doing all of it, not real well yet, but I can [do it]. Out of all the different therapies I've had, this one has helped the most. You'd be amazed at what you can do."
Like McClellan, most patients have been told that if they do not recover movement in a limb in the first year after a stroke, they are unlikely to ever regain it. But the new treatments are overturning that prognosis.
"Some time ago someone told them, 'You're not going to be able to move your arm again,' and to see them do some extension, they were just so excited and motivated. As a researcher, it's very gratifying to help just a little bit in this kind of situation," said James Cauraugh of the University of Florida, who pioneered a study on electrical stimulation treatment.
