Study design and patient recruitment
spasticity, Stroke, chronic stroke, stroke, deaths, acute stroke
STROKE, ACUTE STROKE, STROKE
This study was designed as a prospective, randomized, comparative, single-blind study. Patients were recruited based on the ‘Peradeniya Stroke Registry (PSR)’, the register for acute stroke admissions to the Teaching Hospital, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. Five hundred and forty-four (544) patients diagnosed with their first episodes of stroke and registered from January 2017 to the end of June 2019 were considered for this study. They were detected by a stroke for more than six months at the time of data collection. Therefore, they are considered chronic stroke patients. As the first step, 54 patients who were given thrombolysis, 22 deaths, and eight (8) patients who were diagnosed with both stroke types or non-mentioned diagnoses were excluded from the PSR. Remained total number 460 were contacted by the principal investigator to sort out the eligibility (inclusion and exclusion criteria) and their consent for this study. Among them, five deaths were recorded and 268 had better recovery. Filtered 187 chronic stroke patients with spasticity were undergone a randomization process to allocate to treatment and control groups.