Ferreira 2011.
| Methods | RCT | |
| Participants | n = 10 Right hemisphere stroke |
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| Interventions | Group 1: visual scanning Group 2: mental practice Visual scanning was classified as top‐down Mental practice was classified as top‐down This comparison was classified as one cognitive rehabilitation approach versus another cognitive rehabilitation approach. Visual scanning was defined as Approach 1 and mental practice as Approach 2 |
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| Outcomes |
Intervention group (visual scanning) was assessed at end of intervention period and at 3 months Control group (mental practice) were "evaluated twice and two months between evaluations" |
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| Notes | ||
| Risk of bias | ||
| Bias | Authors' judgement | Support for judgement |
| Allocation concealment (selection bias) | Low risk | Randomisation (information from authors): "Concealed envelopes for every patients (0 or 1). Then patients as they were recruited/included and subsequently randomised by the same method." |
| Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes | High risk | States "The evaluations were always done by a physical therapist not directly involved in patients’ treatment." However, correspondence with authors confirm: "There were two therapists involved, each one directly responsible for a different treatment strategy (mental practice or visual scanning). For instance, whenever a patient was randomised to mental practice, treatment was done by one and assessments by the other therapist. Hence, the assessor was always the therapist who would not be involved in treatment but he always knew the treatment allocation." |
| Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes | Low risk | All complete |
| Free of systematic differences in baseline characteristics of groups compared? | Low risk | 3 groups compared at baseline. Paper reports no significant differences on age, formal schooling, initial BIT and FIM scores . Sex distribution looks similar and all were ischaemic stroke (see Table 8) Raw scores are provided in Table 1 so means SD can be computed |
| Did authors adjust for baseline differences in their analyses? | Low risk | None present |