A Review of the Efficacy of Botulinum Toxin in Spasticity Reduction in Upper and Lower Extremities and Gait improvement in Individuals with Stroke

Stroke is the acute neurological damage caused by perturbation of blood flow or lack of blood supply to part of the brain tissue and nervous system resulted from cerebral artery occlusion by a blood clot or a ruptured artery. This loss causes different functional disorders such as spasticity. Botulinum toxin has been acknowledged as an effective method in reducing spasticity. The purpose of this paper was to review the literature regarding the impact, results, and application of botulinum toxin.
Articles were obtained using the keywords stroke, spasticity, and botulinum toxin from PubMed, MEDLINE, Springer, Science Direct, Elsevier, and Scopus without any time limitation.
Approximately 193 papers were retrieved from the websites using the abovementioned keywords and 36 of them fulfilled the inclusion and exclusion criteria. These articles described the application of botulinum toxin in limb spasticity reduction, motor function improvement, and gait factors promotion. These studies reported that this injection should be combined with other treatments such as physiotherapy, occupational therapy, and home-based exercises in order to cause significant improvement in the ability of the patient.
Botulinum toxin is an effective treatment used in combination with rehabilitative technics to reduce spasticity due to cerebral disorders, and in turn, improve motor function and quality of life.