Data Extraction

The following data were extracted from the included studies: number of subjects; demographic and clinical characteristics of the subjects (age, gender, time since stroke); intervention protocols (type of rTMS and additional therapies, intensity, number of pulses and sessions, type of coil); outcome measures and mean differences and standard deviations (SDs) of the change scores or means and SDs of the scores after intervention. The extracted data was cross-checked by the second reviewer (RC).

We made an overview of all outcome measures used in the included studies and selected the outcome measures that were used in at least two studies, to enable analysis of results per individual outcome measure. Outcome measures were categorized according to the ICF model to group them at the level of function or activity for further analysis.

We made a categorization of time of treatment post-stroke according to the recent recommendations by the Stroke Recovery and Rehabilitation Roundtable (SRRR) taskforce (22): acute to early subacute (<1 month), early subacute (1–3 months), late subacute (3–6 months), and chronic (>6 months). The SRRR categorization of acute (1–7 days) and early subacute (7 days−3 months) were taken together and divided into acute to early subacute (<1 month) and early subacute (1–3 months), because most recovery of motor function takes place within the first 30 days post-stroke (23). In this way, all included studies could fit within a (specific) treatment timeframe. We checked whether the real and sham rTMS conditions of crossover studies could fit within the specific timeframe.