[Efficacy of interventions with video games consoles in stroke patients: a systematic review]

In recent years video games and games consoles have been developed that are potentially useful in rehabilitation, which has led to studies conducted to evaluate the degree of efficacy of these treatments for people following a stroke.

To analyse the literature available related to the effectiveness of applying video games consoles in the functional recovery of the upper extremities in subjects who have survived a stroke.

A review of the literature was conducted in the CINHAL, Medline, PEDro, PsycArticles, PsycInfo, Science Direct, Scopus and Web of Science databases, using the query terms 'video game', 'stroke', 'hemiplegia', 'upper extremity' and 'hemiparesis'. After applying the eligibility criteria (clinical trials published between 2007 and 2017, whose participants were adults who had suffered a stroke with involvement of the upper extremity and who used video games), the scientific quality of the selected studies was rated by means of the PEDro scale. Eleven valid clinical trials were obtained for the systematic review.

The studies that were selected, all of which were quantitative, presented different data and the inferential results indicated different levels of significance between control and experimental groups (82%) or between the different types of treatment (18%).

The use of video games consoles is a useful complement for the conventional rehabilitation of the upper extremities of persons who have survived a stroke, since it increases rehabilitation time and enhances the recovery of motor functioning. Nevertheless, homogeneous intervention protocols need to be implemented in order to standardise the intervention.