Thesis (M.S) - Cairo University - Faculty of physical therapy - Department of Physical therapy for neuromuscular and its surgery.

Included bibliographical references.

Background: Unilateral spatial neglect is a disabling condition frequently occurring after stroke. People with neglect suffer from various spatial deficits in several modalities, which in many cases impair everyday functioning. A successful treatment is yet to be found. Several techniques have been proposed in the last decades. Purpose: to investigate the extent to which the use of virtual reality as an effective treatment technique for patients experiencing unilateral spatial neglect after stroke. Subjects: thirty patients experiencing unilateral spatial neglect after stroke. Methods: patients were randomly assigned to the two groups; a study group and control group. The study group received virtual reality kinect rehabilitation and conventional treatment for eight weeks and control group received conventional treatment using behavioral rehabilitation methods of physical therapy. The disorder was diagnosed with pen-and-paper methods, Catherine Bergego Scale (CBS) and recently, promising new methods based on virtual reality. Results:There was a high significant difference between study and control groups as p-value was (0.0001) which indicated that study group shows improvement more than control group, and there was correlation between line cancellation task, the CBS and the VR repetitions. Conclusion: this study revealed that eight weeks of the virtual reality rehabilitation for every patient was a beneficial therapeutic technique on unilateral spatial neglect in stroke patients.

Text in English, abstracts in Arabic and English.