Three hundred twenty-four patients with cerebrovasclar disorder excluding brain stem and cerebellar diseases were classified into 5 groups (frontar lobe group, aphasia group, agnosia group, hemiplegia group, hypothalamus group) and were examined for their difference in self-reliance on getting-up and walking, monthly up to 12 months of their onset. The results revealed that 4 groups other than frontal lobe group with higher self-reliance on getting-up showed higher self-reliance on walking, indicating an inter-self-reliance difference. Frontal lobe group showed higher self-reliance on walking, but lower self-reliance on getting-up than the other groups, without any inter-self-reliance difference. This is thought to involve vigilance, movability of the trunk and programming disturbance. Especially for frontal lobally-handicapped patients with vigilance disturbance, exercises for walking at the early stage of therapy is considered effective.

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This study was designed to compare the usefulness of lumbar extension exercise for acute and chronic patients with lumbar disc disorders. The subjects were 244 patients, 158 were acute and 86 were chronic. The therapeutic effects were evaluated within 3 weeks of the treatments. At the first examination, finger-floor distance (FFD) with or without pain was similar in both patients. In SLR test, a larger number of chronic patients had more pain than acute patients. At the examination within 3 weeks, there was a significant difference in improvement of FFD for both acute and chronic patients, but the severity of pain when the trunk was flexed was lesser in acute patients than in chronic. Pain accompanied by SLR was also lesser in acute patients than in chronic. Acute patients showed more improvement in subjective symptoms than chronic patients. Three weeks after treatment 79.7% of acute patients and 54.7% of chronic had little or no low back and lower extremity pain. Twenty nine point one percent of chronic patients continued to experience severe pain, 18.6% of which had surgical intervention, compared to only 7.6% of acute patients. These results indicate that chronic patients show lesser improvement in subjective symptoms than acute patients. As indicated by those patients who had surgery and yet showed little reduction in pain during trunk flexion and poor improvement in SLR tests, lumbar extension exercise can be useful for identifying whether or not a patient needs surgery.

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We evaluated the degree of the load on the cardiovascular system given by active exercise of the affected lower limb in patients with stroke hemiplegia. The subjects consisted of 10 patients with this disease not complicated by cardiac disease or severe hypertension. Straight leg raising was performed in the normal and affected lower limbs, and the cardiac rate, systolic blood pressure, and the diastolic blood pressure were measured at 30 sec intervals for 3 min. The double product, which is the product of the cardiac rate and systolic blood pressure, was calculated. In normal limb, the same exercise as that in the affected limb was performed after application of weight belts (0.5, 1.0, 1.5 kg), and the obtained data were compared. The load given on the cardiovascular system by active exercise of the affected lower limb was nearly equal to that by active exercise of the normal limb with a 1.0-kg weight. These results indicate the necessity of careful attention to high risk patients with regard to the load given on the cardiovascular system.

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