29 papers
Rehabilitation medicine and physical therapy focus on helping people regain strength, mobility, and independence after injury, illness, or surgery. This dynamic field explores everything from advanced prosthetics and stroke recovery to chronic pain management and athletic injury prevention, aiming to improve quality of life through evidence-based movement and care.
On Gist.Science, we make the latest research from medRxiv instantly accessible to everyone. We process every new preprint in this category as soon as it is posted, providing both easy-to-understand plain-language explanations and detailed technical summaries to bridge the gap between complex science and real-world application.
Below are the most recent studies in rehabilitation medicine and physical therapy, curated to keep you informed on the cutting edge of patient recovery and functional improvement.
This paper details a structured, co-produced adaptation of the Canadian Walk 'n Watch stroke rehabilitation intervention for UK community settings using the ADAPT guidance and CFIR framework to ensure safety, feasibility, and fidelity while preserving core therapeutic mechanisms.
A 2022 cross-sectional study of 638 upper primary school children in Lusaka, Zambia, reveals that 82% are insufficiently active due to barriers such as unsafe neighborhoods, lack of play spaces, and high screen time, underscoring the need for targeted health interventions that enhance environmental safety and social support to reduce future noncommunicable disease risks.
This study establishes a pre-neurofeedback baseline of motor-task fMRI BOLD activations in chronic stroke patients with upper extremity hemiparesis, revealing consistent cerebellar recruitment across participants that likely reflects compensatory mechanisms for motor control.
This observational study of 72 Brazilian COPD patients found that while body composition and food intake were generally similar between those with preserved physical capacity but low activity versus those with both preserved, a positive trend in skeletal muscle mass was observed in the low-activity group, suggesting that muscle preservation supports functional capacity despite activity levels.
This cross-sectional study of 232 patients in Gujarat, India, found that while the majority were satisfied with their physiotherapy consultations and shared their ideas, very few expressed concerns, highlighting a gap in patient-centered communication despite high overall satisfaction.
This pilot study demonstrates that baseline otolithic structural integrity, assessed via cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potentials, is a critical determinant of subjective recovery in vestibular rehabilitation, suggesting that patients with bilateral structural loss face a physiological "floor" limiting meaningful symptom relief despite functional gains.
This prospective multicenter study in Japan successfully established and assessed the quality of a hospital-associated disability registry database, demonstrating its feasibility for collecting detailed clinical data to support future research on risk factors and prevention strategies for functional decline in older adults.
A 2025 survey of 511 cancer patients at Beijing Cancer Hospital reveals that 94.1% are willing to receive acupuncture, primarily for sleep and pain relief, with willingness significantly influenced by higher Traditional Chinese Medicine literacy and demographic factors such as gender and age.
This study demonstrates that the co-designed, theory-informed STRIDE rehabilitation programme is acceptable and feasible for improving walking outcomes in patients undergoing lumbar spinal stenosis surgery, showing promising signals of clinical benefit that support progression to a definitive trial.
This study reveals that the COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted physiotherapy services in Nepal by reducing patient access and worsening conditions, while simultaneously prompting clinicians to adapt through expanded multidisciplinary roles, increased recognition of respiratory care, and the tentative exploration of tele-rehabilitation.