Physician IMS Itabashi Rehabilitation Hospital Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Objectives : Galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) is an electrophysiological method to modulate balance perception. Although it has been demonstrated to induce immediate alterations in balance perception in stroke patients with hemiparesis, no reports have examined balance training conducted under GVS.The present study aims to evaluate the combined effects of GVS and balance training in patients with sitting imbalance leaning toward the paretic side.
Design: Adult patients with unilateral supratentorial stroke were randomly assigned to Group A, receiving bipolar galvanic vestibular stimulation (1.5 mA, anode on the lesioned side), or Group B, receiving sham stimulation. Over a period of three weeks, participants underwent seated or standing postural training under the assigned condition on more than 10 days. Pre- and post-intervention assessments included the Subjective Visual Vertical (SVV), Trunk Impairment Scale (TIS), Berg Balance Scale (BBS), the sitting version of the Scale for Contraversive Pushing (sitting SCP), percentage of weight-bearing on the paretic side during sitting, and trunk tilt angle.
Results: Intervention and evaluation were conducted in two patients in Group A and two patients in Group B. The mean values for each measure before and after the intervention were as follows: SVV, –4.0° → 2.0°; TIS, 7.5 → 15.8; BBS, 2.8 → 6.5; sitting SCP, 1.1 → 0.6; percentage of weight-bearing on the paretic side in sitting, 67.9% → 57.1%; and trunk tilt angle, –9.0° → 0.6°.
Conclusion: Improvements were observed in all outcome measures in both groups, with a reduction of leaning toward the paretic side. However, variability in responses among patients was noted, the number of cases was insufficient to demonstrate significant differences between the groups. Further patient enrollment, intervention, and validation are required.
