People who have had a stroke commonly have difficulty walking and using the arm to complete self-care tasks. Repetitive practice of these tasks (or components of the tasks) with progressive increases in difficulty to challenge the patient is required to bring about improvement in function. Guidelines for stroke management recommend a large amount of practice in order to maximise outcome after stroke.
Rehabilitation is resource intensive, both for the patient and the healthcare system. It is therefore important to determine the effect increasing the amount of usual rehabilitation. Specifically, how much extra rehabilitation time is required to bring about measureable improvements in activity after stroke?