Healthcare professional helps senior woman walk with a walker
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People who receive rehabilitation as part of their hospital stay are more likely to be sent to skilled nursing facilities or inpatient rehabilitation centers, a new study finds.
A report published last month in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, examined how much therapy is best. Anil Makam, MD, of UC San Francisco, and Danh Nguyen, MD, of University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, led the team.They said that patients who receive more hospital rehabilitation do not necessarily get to return home sooner compared to those who receive less rehabilitation during their hospital stay.
A small minority of patients receiving more than 14 hours of therapy each week were more likely to return home, the authors found. Hospitals often provide physical and occupational therapy to help patients get back into the swing of things after a surgery. This is especially true for older adults, who can benefit from the therapy to help them regain function or preserve existing function.
Some people only receive rehabilitation in the hospital, while others go on to an inpatient or outpatient rehabilitation facility for additional services. Long-term care centers can also provide rehabilitation services.
In related news, a study published Wednesday in Cureus looked at the relationship between brain frailty and physical function in 160 older adults who had a stroke and were undergoing rehabilitation. Researchers assessed participants’ brain frailty and activities of daily living at the time people were sent home from a rehabilitation center.
Participants with a higher brain frailty score (indicating more frailty) had lower functional independence scores at discharge compared to those with lower brain frailty scores (indicating less frailty), the data showed. The team said that understanding a person’s brain frailty may be a good predictor of how they will handle stroke rehabilitation.