Impacts of Application of Virtual Reality on Gait and Balance for Stroke Patients

Effects of Virtual Reality Training on the Balance, Gait, and Quality of Life Improvements of Patients With Stroke in the Subacute and Chronic Stages.

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn about effects of virtual reality combined with conventional therapy on the balance, gait, and quality of life in stroke patients in the subacute and chronic stages. The main questions it aims to answer are:

• Virtual reality combined conventional therapy interventions can improve the gait, balance and functional status of stroke patients or not?

Participants will asked to do about 3 tasks in virtual reality intervention

• Walk in the flat ground
• Cross the obstacle on the ground
• Cross to moving obstacles

The investigators referred to the scenes designed by previous studies to develop the three virtual environments employed in this study and made slight modifications according to Taiwan's conditions. Google Earth Virtual Reality (Google Inc., Mountain View, California, U.S., 2017) was uesd for the first and second task and Street Champ Virtual Reality (Zynk Software Srl , Cluj, Romania, 2016) was used for the third task.

Time constraints, terrain changes, and moving obstacles were set to increase the difficulty of the walking task. The speed obtained by the 10-m walking pretest was used as the training benchmark. The participants had to complete a task three times to proceed to the next level.

For Patient Registries: on-site audit.The subjects were referred from the rehabilitation Clinic of Kaohsiung Municipal Ta-Tung Hospital

Inclusion Criteria:

• 1. Clinical diagnosis of Stroke. 2. Must be able to ambulation with or without devices. 3. Were able to communicate and follow instructions. 4. Were rehabilitated at Kaohsiung Municipal Ta-Tung Hospital.

Exclusion Criteria:

• 1. Limb apraxia. 2. Any vision impairments. 3. Any hearing impairments. 4. Any vestibular impairments. 5. Any comorbidities that affected movements.