earticle

영어

We aimed to conduct a systematic literature review with a meta-analy-sis to investigate whether virtual reality (VR) approaches have benefi-cial effects on the upper extremity function and independent activities of stroke survivors. Experimental studies published between 2007 and 2017 were searched from two databases (EBSCOhost and PubMed). This study reviewed abstracts and assessed full articles to obtain evi-dence on qualitative studies. For the meta-analysis, the studies that es-timated the standardized mean between the two groups analyzed the statistical values necessary for calculating the effect size. The present study also evaluated the statistical heterogeneity. In total, 34 studies with 1,604 participants were included, and the number of participants in each study ranged from 10 to 376. Nine studies were assessed to evalu-ate the quantitative statistical analysis for 698 patients with hemiparetic stroke. The results of the meta-analysis were as follows: The overall ef-fect size was moderate (0.41, P<0.001). The 95% confidence interval ranged from 0.25 to 0.57. However, no significant heterogeneity and publication bias were observed. The results of this study showed that VR approaches are effective in improving upper extremity function and independent activities in stroke survivors.