Recovery after stroke: the severely impaired are a distinct group

Introduction Stroke causes different levels of impairment and the degree of recovery varies greatly between patients. The majority of recovery studies are biased towards patients with mild-to-moderate impairments, challenging a unified recovery process framework. Our aim was to develop a statistical framework to analyse recovery patterns in patients with severe and non-severe initial impairment and concurrently investigate whether they recovered differently. Methods We designed a Bayesian hierarchical model to estimate 3-6 months upper limb Fugl-Meyer (FM) scores after stroke. When focusing on the explanation of recovery patterns, we addressed confounds affecting previous recovery studies and considered patients with FM-initial scores