Interaction between Locomotion and Self-Care for Patients with Stroke in Severity Classification Based on the Motor Functional Independence Measure upon Admission to the Recovery Ward

Background: A correlation between self-care and gait in stroke patients has been shown. However, there are few reports suggesting an interaction between self-care and gait. Purpose: To investigate the interaction between locomotion and improvements in self-care. Participants and Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 3034 stroke patients who were registered in the Japanese Rehabilitation Database. Using their data, patients were classified into three groups (severe, moderate, slight) based on the motor functional independence measure upon admission, and data were modified as mean-centered values. We performed a correlation analysis to evaluate the relationship among all the collected data. Subsequently, a hierarchical multiple regression analysis was performed to evaluate interaction using the self-care motor score from the Functional Independent Measure (FIM) as the dependent variable. Model 1 used two independent variables (National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale and cognitive FIM score), model 2 used two independent variables (locomotion gain and gain of an item with the strongest correlation coefficient to the de-pendent variable), and model 3 used a mean-centering value, which was added to model 2. The simple slope was used for further analysis. Results: Locomotion showed an interaction with