Efficacy and Safety of a Learning Program of Self- Rehabilitation Exercises by Mirror Therapy

Overview

AlgoMIR project born thanks to a meeting between pain professionals and re-education staff. The goal of this project is to develop and evaluate a program of learning with exercises by mirror therapy, that could be easily shared with paramedic teams and easily adapted to different handicaps. Researchers have chosen to select patients with re-education of the upper extremity to benefit from rehabilitation sessions either from physiotherapists present in their city, or of functional rehabilitation hospital units.

The Complex Regional Painful Syndromes (CRPS) called in the past aglodystrophia, are characterized by the apparition of pain abnormally spread and intensive compared to the initial causal factor. They are usually associated to negligence of the painful limb, and avoidance movements that require care in rehabilitation that it is carried out in the physiotherapist center or functional rehabilitation unit at hospital. Recently, mirror therapy has been proposed to correct dysfunctions : patients have to realize a movement with their two hands, observing the reflect of their healthy hand in a mirror, while their painful hand is hidden behind the mirror. After a learning phase, patients have to continue this kind of therapy independently. AlgoMIR project born thanks to a meeting between pain professionals and re-education staff. The goal of this project is to develop and evaluate a program of learning with exercises by mirror therapy, that could be easily shared with paramedic teams and easily adapted to different handicaps. Researchers have chosen to select patients with re-education of the upper extremity to benefit from rehabilitation sessions either from physiotherapists present in their city, or of functional rehabilitation hospital units. The primary outcome of this project is to compare analgesic effect at 8 and 16 weeks of a therapy mirror re-education program associated to a usual care (M+R), and of a usual care program (R). A second goal is to understand eventual difficulties met by the patients and improve efficacy of the autonomous becoming of patients using mirror therapy.