Functional recovery of patients with brain tumor or acute stroke after rehabilitation: a comparative study

The aim of this study was to compare the locomotor functional recovery of patients with brain tumor and patients with stroke. Each patient with a brain tumor was matched to a patient with stroke according to the lesion side. Twenty-one patients operated for intracranial tumors and 21 patients with stroke were studied. The mean ages (+/- standard deviation) of patients were 52.5+/-16 years for patients with brain tumor and 56.7+/-11 years for patients with stroke. For each patient, the age, gender, presence of aphasia, smoking habit, co-morbidities, lesion origin and lesion size (for the brain tumor group) were recorded. Locomotor and functional recovery were evaluated by using the Postural Assessment Scale for Stroke, the Berg Balance Scale, Motor Assessment Scale and the mobility section of the Functional Impairment Measure. There was no difference regarding demographic characteristics between the two groups. After rehabilitation both groups had significantly improved in terms of all parameters, but the extent of improvement did not differ between the two groups.