Moving rehabilitation research forward: Developing consensus statements for rehabilitation and recovery research

Abstract

Stroke recovery is the next frontier in stroke medicine. While growth in rehabilitation and recovery research is exponential, a number of barriers hamper our ability to rapidly progress the field. Standardized terminology is absent in both animal and human research, methods are poorly described, recovery biomarkers are not well defined, and we lack consistent timeframes or measures to examine outcomes. Agreed methods and conventions for developing, monitoring, evaluating and reporting interventions directed at improving recovery are lacking, and current approaches are often not underpinned by biology. We urgently need to better understand the biology of recovery and its time course in both a..