Abstract
This paper presents the current state of stroke rehabilitation in Japan. The Japanese rehabilitation system is much different from those in other countries, mainly because of the Japanese insurance system, which covers from acute to chronic conditions. In this situation, a Japanese inpatient stroke rehabilitation program treats patients until they reach a plateau in impairment and disability. Thus we can evaluate the true func tional prognosis because of longer periods of observation for assessing the recovery pat tern of impairment and disability. As a result, we can predict stroke outcome much more precisely. We recently developed a new evaluation methods for stroke patients called the Stroke Impairment Assessment Set (SIAS) based on work from the Sym posium on Methodologic Issues in Stroke Outcome Research in 1989. Using the SIAS and the Functional Independence Measure, we have successfully predicted stroke out come using regression analysis.