Vol. 7, Issue 1, Part B (2025)

Background: Stroke becomes one of the reasons of adult disability and mortality globally, with profound effects on mobility, independence, and life quality. Lower-extremity in stroke are significantly reduces gait stability, slows walking speed. Mirror therapy and neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) have demonstrated encouraging outcomes in gait post-stroke rehabilitation.

Aims and Objectives: Compare and evaluation of the effectiveness of mirror therapy and conventional therapy with neuromuscular electrical stimulation on gait in subacute stroke patients.

Methodology: The 30 patients with subacute stroke aged between 50 – 70 years were selected and included in the study as per inclusion and exclusion criteria. They randomly divided into two groups, namely group A and group B. Pre-test data of lower extremity motor functional performance of both groups was recorded using the dynamic gait index (DGI). Group A was treated with mirror therapy while group B given conventional physiotherapy with neuromuscular electrical stimulation. The data was obtained from all the groups at beginning of the study as pre-test and at the end of twelve weeks as post-test. Mean, standard deviation, paired and unpaired “t” test was used for data analysis.

Result: The mean improvement in dynamic gait scores of Dynamic Gait Index (DGI) was 9.87 in group A and 5.86 in group B. It was resulted that mirror therapy showed significant effect in improving DGI scores over conventional therapy with neuromuscular electrical stimulation in stroke patients.

Conclusion: It was concluded that both mirror therapy and conventional therapy with neuromuscular electrical stimulation were effective but mirror therapy were more effective over conventional therapy with neuromuscular electrical stimulation on improving gait of post-stroke hemiplegic patients.