Effectiveness of various rehabilitation exercises for improving muscle strength in patients with stroke: A literature review
DOI: https://doi.org/10.33024/min.v9i7.4441
Exercise Therapy Literature Review Muscle Strength Stroke Stroke Rehabilitation
Abstract
Background: Muscle weakness is frequent after stroke and can restrict daily functioning, independence, and long-term recovery. The rehabilitation approaches used to address weakness differ considerably in type and dose, making direct comparison difficult.
Purpose: To identify studies of exercise-based rehabilitation that directly measured muscle strength and to describe features shared by interventions with favorable findings.
Method: A PICO-guided structured narrative literature review was undertaken. Due to resource constraints, searches were restricted to PubMed, ScienceDirect, and Springer Nature for English full-text controlled and quasi-experimental studies published from January 2017 through April 2026. Screening and data extraction were completed by one reviewer, and findings were summarized narratively. No formal critical appraisal, risk-of-bias assessment, or meta-analysis was undertaken due to substantial clinical and methodological heterogeneity across the included studies.
Results: Nine studies with a combined sample of 595 participants met the criteria. The interventions included passive range of motion (ROM), resistance or strengthening exercise, sit-to-stand practice, cylindrical gripping, sling-supported shoulder exercise, bilateral computer-game training, upper-limb cycle ergometry, and Erigo robotic tilt-table exercise. Some studies demonstrated significant between-group benefits, whereas others reported only within-group improvement or incomplete comparative statistics.
Conclusion: Exercise-based rehabilitation appears to have potential for improving muscle strength after stroke; however, restricted database coverage, high rates of unretrieved full texts (64% of sought reports), single-reviewer procedures, and the absence of formal critical appraisal limit certainty. The available evidence is hypothesis-generating rather than definitive and does not establish one exercise type as superior.
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