If ambulatory prognosis of stroke patients can be predicted more accurately through certain objective evaluations at the beginning of rehabilitation treatment, goal setting and treatment planning for individual patient can be facilitated and much easily specified. With relatively accurate ambulatory expectations, rehabilitation training may have a better focus and improve the general outlook of patients. In that perspective, the authors studied and analyzed the possible prognostic factors that can be evaluated at the beginning of the rehabilitation treatment to provide accurate expectations of achievable ambulatory status. Forty five stroke patients were evaluated and the following results were obtained: 1) Sitting balance, muscle strength of the paretic lower limb and perception level were found to be significant factors in ambulation. 2) Above three factors together contribute 64% to ambulation, 48.5% by the sitting balance, 11.1% by the muscle strength and 4.4% by the perception level respectively. 3) Patient's age, time interval between the stroke onset and the beginning of the rehabilitation treatment(77.8% started rehabilitation treatment within 12 weeks of stroke onset), ambulation training duration, and proprioception did not show significant relevance to achieved ambulatory status. |