Comparison of Clinical Effects of High-frequency and Low-frequency rTMS for Functional Recovery in Acute Stroke Patients

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of high- and low-frequency rTMS on the recovery of upper extremity function in acute stroke patients. This study was designed as a randomized, sham-controlled, double-blind, clinical trial. Experimental subjects were randomly divided into 10 Hz rTMS group (high frequency) and 1Hz group (low frequency). All subjects received 10 stimulation sessions, 5 days a week for 2 weeks. In the high frequency group (N=12), 10Hz rTMS was applied to the M1 area on the side of the brain lesion. The control group (N=13) applied 1Hz rTMS to the same brain area as the high-frequency group. In this study, the Modified Barthel Index (MBI) was used to evaluate independence in activities of daily living in stroke patients. To evaluate upper limb motor function, Fugl-Meyer motor assessment (FMA-UE) and Manual Function Test (MFT) were used. All subjects had motor function assessed before and 2 weeks after rTMS. There was no significant difference before and after intervention in both the high-frequency and low-frequency groups (p 0.05). In the comparison between the two groups, there was no significant difference in all variables after the intervention (p 0.05). There is still controversy as to whether high-frequency stimulation of the lesional M1 or low-frequency stimulation of the contralesional M1 is effective for stroke patients with mild and moderate functional impairment.