Post-stroke functional assessments based on rehabilitation games and their correlation with clinical scales: A scoping review

Abstract

Considering that stroke is one of the main causes of adult impairment and the growing interest in Virtual Reality (VR) as a potential assessment and treatment tool for the rehabilitation of stroke patients, a scoping review was conducted to check whether user's motion data obtained from VR games and simulations can be clinically valid. This was done by reviewing studies on parameters for assessing the functional skills and rehabilitation progress using data from VR games or simulations. Then, identifying the most widely used and validated parameters for the quantification of motor ability in a virtual environment and suggesting challenges for future research. For the validation of the parameters obtained from the VR software, only the studies that correlated them with traditional physiotherapy scales were considered. In December 2022, a search of the following databases was performed: IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, PubMed and PEDro. The selection criteria were studies published in English during the past 10 years, with upper-limb based interaction and tested on more than one stroke patient. A total of 14 were included in the PRISMA scoping review. Favorable results were found in 12 of the 14 studies, which reported positive or strongly positive correlations with clinical scales, even when diverse variables were used. In-depth research using a larger sample size is needed. The results demonstrate that data collected while playing a virtual serious game has the potential to be clinically valid, after conducting high-quality supportive studies with controlled variables, potentially helping the practice in terms of time and resources.

Keywords: Games; Rehabilitation; Scoping review; Stroke; Virtual reality.