Rationale for Intervention and Dose Is Lacking in Stroke Recovery Trials: A Systematic Review

Table 2

Characteristics of 194 included trials.

Trial Characteristic	n (%)
Year of publication
<1980	1 (0.5)
1980–1989	12 (6.2)
1990–1999	29 (14.9)
2000–2009	122 (62.9)
2010–2013	30 (15.5)
Location of first author
USA or Canada	66 (34.0)
Europe	48 (24.7)
UK or Ireland	35 (18.0)
Asia	25 (12.9)
Australia or New Zealand	13 (6.7)
Middle East	6 (3.1)
South America	1 (0.5)
Type of intervention
Motor control, upper limb	42 (21.6)
Strength / fitness	41 (21.1)
Mental practice / perceptual training	28 (14.4)
Balance / gait / ambulation	27 (13.9)
Speech and language	26 (13.4)
Sensory training, upper limb	9 (4.6)
Activities of daily living (ADL)	8 (4.1)
Cognition	6 (3.1)
Sensory training, visual field	5 (2.6)
Motor control, functional recovery	2 (1.0)
Intervention sites
Number of studies reporting intervention site/s	124 (63.9)
Single site^†	97 (78)
Multi-site‡	26 (21)
Multi-country	1 (1)
Sample size
Number of studies reporting sample size	194 (100)
Median sample size (IQR)	32 (20 – 58)
Intervention commencement, days post-stroke
Number of studies reporting days post-stroke	172 (88.7)
Days post-stroke to intervention, median (IQR)	142 (32.1 – 815.1)

See Supplemental Table 3 for breakdown by country.
^† includes 31 home-based interventions, where participants were located in a single geographical region.
‡ includes 5 home-based interventions, where the study was undertaken in several regions within the same country.