Efficacy of an expanded integrative rehabilitation approach in patients with Guillain-Barre syndrome: a case series

Introduction The work aims to present the design of the physical rehabilitation program used in cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome in conditions of the neurorehabilitation department. Methods The work includes a description of three cases with Guillain-Barre syndrome. To assess the effectiveness of the rehabilitation strategy, the sensory assessment was performed according to the INCAT testing system and the muscle assessment – based on a 0–5 scale of manual testing. The patients underwent an assessment for general motor skills and orthostatic hypotension. Pain syndrome was assessed on a 10-point scale. The rehabilitation strategy included different interventional approaches and a large volume of functional and task-oriented exercises designed according to the method for the 4th degree of the Hughes scale targeting different motor skills of the patients. Results Improvement was observed in all tested movements of patients. For a proportion of tested movements, the differences between the initial and final testing scores were significant. All pain and sensory assessment results showed significant improvement. Conclusions The very small sample of patients was not enough to show the impact of the designed intervention on all outcomes, but the designed expanded strategy could be used in a future case-control study with a large group of participants to evidence the efficacy of the expanded cluster of interventions.