Functional Assessment for Control of the Trunk Predicts Independent Walking in Patients with Stroke.

Introduction: This study examined the association of trunk function evaluated using Functional Assessment for Control of Trunk (FACT) with independent walking. It aimed to determine the effectiveness of the FACT cutoff score in predicting independent walking at hospital discharge.

Methods: This retrospective observational study included patients with cerebral infarction. The patients were categorized into the independent (Functional Independence Measure [FIM] locomotion walking score of the patient was ≥6; n = 102) and dependent (≤5; n = 111) groups based on the FIM locomotion scale at discharge. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was employed to determine the significant independent variables on admission for predicting independent walking at discharge. Furthermore, the receiver operating characteristic was used to calculate the cutoff value for admission status.

Results: A total of 213 patients (122 men and 91 women) were included in this study. The independent group had higher scores in FACT (15.0 [12.0-20.0] vs. 6.0 [2.0-12.0], < 0.001) on admission than the dependent group. The results of the multivariate logistic regression analysis indicated that the factors associated with independent walking were the FACT and Mini-Mental State Examination-Japanese (MMSE-J) on admission. The optimal cutoff score for the FACT on admission was 8, and the area under the curve for the FACT scores on admission when discriminating between independent walking at discharge was 0.82.

Conclusions: The results of this study can facilitate the optimization of patient rehabilitation as early as possible. The effects of improved trunk function require further validation through prospective observational studies.