Objective: To examine the effectiveness of intensive practice of sit-to-stand on motor performance, exercise capacity and exercise efŽciency in traumatic brain-injured patients during early inpatient rehabilitation. Design: Single-blind randomized controlled pilot study.
Setting: Brain injury rehabilitation unit. Subjects: Twenty-four subjects who had recently sustained a severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) were randomized into an experimental (n = 13) and a control (n = 11) group. Interventions: In addition to their usual rehabilitation programme, subjects in the experimental group participated in four weeks of intensive training of
sit-to-stand and step-up exercises with the aim of improving performance of sit-to-stand. The control group did no additional sit-to-stand or step-up training.
Main outcome measures: Total number of sit-to-stands in 3 min as a measure of motor performance; peak oxygen consumption during a maximal 3-min sit-to-stand test (VO2peak) as a measure of exercise capacity; oxygen consumption during a 3-min equivalent workload sit-to-stand test (VO2equiv) as a measure of exercise efŽciency. Pre- and post-training measurements were made. Results: The exercise programme resulted in a 62% improvement in motor performance (number of repetitions of sit-to-stand in 3 min) for the experimental group compared with the control group’s 18% improvement (p < style="font-weight: bold;">Colleen G Canning, Roberta B Shepherd, Janet H Carr, Jennifer A
Alison School of Physiotherapy, The University
of Sydney, Lauren Wade and Alanna White Brain Injury Rehabilitation Service, Westmead Hospital, New South Wales, Australia Bajar Aquí
