OBJECTIVE The primary goal of this study was to identify clinical risk factors, in addition to muscle weakness, for upper-extremity hypertonia in patients with severe ischaemic supratentorial stroke. The secondary goal was to investigate the time course of upper-extremity hypertonia in these patients during the first 26 weeks post-stroke. DESIGN Inception cohort. PATIENTS Forty-three consec...

OBJECTIVE The primary goal was to identify the neuroradiological and neurophysiological risk factors for upper-extremity hypertonia in patients with severe ischaemic supratentorial stroke. DESIGN Inception cohort. PATIENTS Forty-three consecutive patients with an acute ischaemic supratentorial stroke and an initial upper-extremity paralysis admitted to an academic hospital recruited over a ...

Since 1997, focused shock waves therapy (FSWT) has been reported to be useful in the treatment of muscle hypertonia and dystonia. More recently, also radial shock wave therapy (RSWT) has been successfully used to treat muscle hypertonia. The studies where FSWT and RSWT have been used to treat muscle hypertonia and dystonia are reviewed in this paper. The more consistent and long lasting results...

Botulinum toxins (BTX) have revolutionised the management of focal post-stroke spastic hypertonia. Published literature has supported the efficacy and safety of BTX in reducing spastic hypertonia but has not convincingly demonstrated the ability to enhance function. While clinicians and stroke survivors have reported impressive clinical outcomes, randomised, controlled trials (RCTs), have demon...

We examined ionized magnesium concentration by blood analysis in patients with hypertonia arterialis, ischemic heart diseases, both of them and in a control group. Slighty lower mean serum ionized magnesium concentration was found in the study group hypertonia arterialis when compared to the control group. In patients both group "B" with coronary artery diseases and group "C" with hypertonia ar...

Spasticity is considered an important neural contributor to muscle hypertonia in children with cerebral palsy (CP). It is most often treated with antispasticity medication, such as Botulinum Toxin-A. However, treatment response is highly variable. Part of this variability may be due to the inability of clinical tests to differentiate between the neural (e.g., spasticity) and nonneural (e.g., so...

Spasticity is the velocity-dependent increase in muscle tone due to the exaggeration of stretch reflex. It is only one of the several components of the upper motor neuron syndrome (UMNS). The central lesion causing the UMNS disrupts the balance of supraspinal inhibitory and excitatory inputs directed to the spinal cord, leading to a state of disinhibition of the stretch reflex. However, the del...