Profiles of functional outcomes in stroke rehabilitation for Chinese population: a cluster analysis.

The objectives of study were to identify longitudinal ADL profiles and to investigate profiles characteristics of participants in stroke rehabilitation programme. 496 stroke rehabilitation records in one year were retrieved. Patients' demographics, admission scores of Cantonese version of Mini-mental State Examination and line cancellation test were retrieved. Chinese version of the Modified Barthel Index (MBI-C) records for the first four successive weeks were also obtained for cluster analysis. Four functional profiles were yielded after cluster analysis. Repeated measures ANOVA showed that Profile 1 (n = 168) with oldest age, lowest baseline MBI-C and line cancellation test scores had improvement only at the last two measurement points (p < 0.001). Profile 4 (n = 100) with youngest age and highest baseline MBI-C showed progress for the first two assessment points then slowing down progressively, while the other two profiles showed improvement on all measurement points (p < 0.001) but with different baseline MBI-C and increments. One-way ANOVA further revealed significant differences in demographics, cognitive-perceptual and receptive speech functions among the profiles. The present study revealed different recovery potential among people with stroke. The higher the initial ADL performance, younger age and the absence of unilateral neglect appeared to relate to better functional recovery.