Title : A pilot study to explore the feasibility of a localised Virtual Reality cognitive rehabilitation programme for stroke survivors in Singapore
Abstract:
Background: Stroke survivors usually present cognitive impairments that usually requires long-term follow-up. This increases the manpower demands of healthcare. After returning to community, there are limited accessible resources to continue their cognitive training too. In addition, the current traditional single-sensory-input cognitive training is usually boring, which makes stroke survivors who are prone to mental fatigue feel even more difficult to be compliant with. This leads to slow recovery and low compliance rate of cognitive rehabilitation. Virtual Reality (VR) is emerging recently as a new technology in rehabilitation which was found effective in physical rehabilitation training for stroke patients.
Objective: The study aims to determine the feasibility of implementing a localised cognitive rehabilitation programme that was developed by the research team with hybrid methods (clinic and tele-rehab) for stroke patients with cognitive impairments.
Methods: This is an experimental study. We aim to recruit 12 acute ischemic stroke survivors whose age are between 21 to 77 with cognitive impairment (Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) score between 10 to 26) in the study. All patients will receive their VR treatment (3o minutes) and conventional training (15 minutes) each session either in clinic or via tele-rehab with Occupational Therapists(OT) for four weeks with four sessions per week. A few outcome measures for feasibility of VR, cognition and well-being will be performed pre- and post- treatment, which included A self-designed questionnaire including system usability scale (SUS), the intrinsic motivation inventory (IMI) and Virtual reality neuroscience questionnaire(VRISE), Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of neuropsychological Status Update(RBANS), Trail Test A&B and EQ-5D. all assessment results will be calculated in Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS).
Results: We are undergoing recruitment and we hope to share the results after the completion of the study by October 2023.
Conclusion: We would like to share the conclusion after the completion of the study by October 2023.
