Comparison of Clinical Effects of High-frequency and Low-frequency rTMS for Functional Recovery in Acute Stroke Patients

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of high- and low-frequency rTMS on the recovery of upper extremity function in acute stroke patients. This study was designed as a randomized, sham-controlled, double-blind, clinical trial. Experimental subjects were randomly divided into 10 Hz rTMS group (high frequency) and 1Hz group (low frequency). All subjects received 10 stimulation sessions, 5 days a week for 2 weeks. In the high frequency group (N=12), 10Hz rTMS was applied to the M1 area on the side of the brain lesion. The control group (N=13) applied 1Hz rTMS to the same brain area as the high-frequency group. In this study, the Modified Barthel Index (MBI) was used to evaluate independence in activities of daily living in stroke patients. To evaluate upper limb motor function, Fugl-Meyer motor assessment (FMA-UE) and Manual Function Test (MFT) were used. All subjects had motor function assessed before and 2 weeks after rTMS. There was no significant difference before and after intervention in both the high-frequency and low-frequency groups (p > 0.05). In the comparison between the two groups, there was no significant difference in all variables after the intervention (p > 0.05). There is still controversy as to whether high-frequency stimulation of the lesional M1 or low-frequency stimulation of the contralesional M1 is effective for stroke patients with mild and moderate functional impairment.