Abstract
Candia V, Schäfer T, Taub E, Rau H, Altenmüller E, Rockstroh B, Elbert T. Sensory
motor returning: a behavioral treatment for focal hand dystonia of pianists and guitarists.
Arch Phys Med Rehabil 2002;83:1342-8. Objective: To evaluate the long-term effectiveness of sensory motor retuning (SMR), a new treatment
for focal hand dystonia in musicians. Design: Prospective case series with an (adventitious) comparison group with 3- to 25-month
follow-up in piano and guitar and 0- to 4-month follow-up in flute and oboe players.
Setting: General community in Germany. Participants: Eleven professional musicians. Intervention: Immobilization by splints of 1 or more digits other than the focal dystonic finger.
This finger carried out repetitive exercises in coordination with 1 or more of the
other digits for 1½ to 2½ hours a day for 8 consecutive days under therapist supervision.
The subjects then were instructed to continue practice for 1 hour daily for 1 year.
Main Outcome Measures: Spectral analysis of the output of a dexterity-displacement device that continuously
recorded digital displacement during finger movements and a dystonia evaluation scale
on which patients rated how well they had just performed dystonic movement sequences
and repertoire passages. Results: The 3 wind players (adventitious placebo controls) did not improve substantially.
However, each pianist and guitarist showed marked and significant improvement in spontaneous
repertoire performance without the splint. The first subject is now 25 months posttreatment.
Conclusions: Results suggest that SMR is of value for the treatment of focal hand dystonia in
pianists and guitarists. © 2002 by the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine and the American Academy
of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Keywords
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Article info
Footnotes
☆Supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Rehabilitation Research Service of the Veterans Administration (grant nos. B95-975R, W98-0410).
☆☆No commercial party having a direct financial interest in the results of the research supporting this article has or will confer a benefit upon the author(s) or upon any organization with which the author(s) is/are associated.
★Reprint requests to Victor Candia, MA, Dept of Psychology, University of Konstanz, Box D25, D-78457 Konstanz, Germany, e-mail: [email protected]
Identification
Copyright
© 2002 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine and the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
