Comparison of the Effectiveness of Whole Body Vibration in Stroke Patients: A Meta-Analysis.

Author: Park YJ1, Park SW1, Lee HS2
Affiliation:
1Department of Physical Therapy, Samsung Seoul Hospital, 81 Irwon-ro, Gangnam-Gu, Seoul 06351, Republic of Korea.
2Department of Physical Therapy, Faculty of Health Science, Eulji University, 212 Yangji-dong, Sujeong-gu, Seongnam, Gyeonggi-do 461-713, Republic of Korea.
Conference/Journal: Biomed Res Int.
Date published: 2018 Jan 2
Other: Volume ID: 2018 , Pages: 5083634 , Special Notes: doi: 10.1155/2018/5083634. eCollection 2018. , Word Count: 182


Objectives: The goals of this study were to assess the effectiveness of WBV (whole body vibration) training through an analysis of effect sizes, identify advantages of WBV training, and suggest other effective treatment methods.

Methods: Four databases, namely, EMBASE, PubMed, EBSCO, and Web of Science, were used to collect articles on vibration. Keywords such as "vibration" and "stroke" were used in the search for published articles. Consequently, eleven studies were selected in the second screening using meta-analyses.

Results: The total effect size of patients with dementia in the studies was 0.25, which was small. The effect size of spasticity was the greatest at 1.24 (high), followed by metabolism at 0.99 (high), balance, muscle strength, gait, and circulation in the decreasing order of effect size.

Conclusions: The effect sizes for muscle strength and balance and gait function, all of which play an important role in performance of daily activities, were small. In contrast, effect sizes for bone metabolism and spasticity were moderate. This suggests that WBV training may provide a safe, alternative treatment method for improving the symptoms of stroke in patients.

PMID: 29487869 PMCID: PMC5816889 DOI: 10.1155/2018/5083634

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