Stroke patients with arm paresis can achieve lasting functional improvement many months after their stroke when they go through an intensive rehabilitation program, a UK study suggests.

A study of a London hospital program challenged beliefs that chronic stroke patients could not cope with very intense intervention, the researchers say.

The program, run by the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (known as Queen Square), delivers the rehabilitation six hours a day, five days a week for three consecutive weeks, giving a total of 90 hours of rehab therapy to each patient.

In a study of 224 patients with arm paresis caused by stroke and a median time since the stroke of 18 months at baseline, scores on two arm function tests showed improvement more than the minimum clinically important difference (MCID) on discharge at three weeks.