Prevention and treatment of hand oedema after stroke.

Purpose: As there is no evidence for a specific treatment for post-stroke-induced hand oedema, rehabilitation centre Blixembosch formalized a best practice protocol. We investigated whether the Blixembosch hand oedema protocol is usable in daily practice and leads to lower incidence (prevention) and shorter duration (treatment) compared with care as usual.

Methods: In a non-randomised comparative trial, we investigated 206 post-stroke patients admitted to two Dutch rehabilitation centres.