Gait analysis assisted by robotic walker in patients with post-stroke hemiparesis

What a novel idea. Objective analysis of a post-stroke gait. Why hasn't this been done and taught in PT schools? If you don't objectively know what the problems are you can never tell if those problems are resolved and exactly what protocols corrected them. This is just a microcosm of all the problems in stroke rehab.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1753-6561/8/S4/P267

Flávia Loterio^* and Teodiano Bastos-Filho

• * Corresponding author: Flávia Loterio

Author Affiliations

Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Vitória, ES, Brazil

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BMC Proceedings 2014, 8(Suppl 4):P267  doi:10.1186/1753-6561-8-S4-P267

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1753-6561/8/S4/P267

Published:

1 October 2014

© 2014 Loterio and Bastos-Filho; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Poster presentation

Stroke is the leading cause of motor dysfunction in adults worldwide. The motor impairment, characteristic of a post-stroke patient, is the hemiparetic gait. This paper proposes a gait analysis assisted by a robotic walker in patients with post-stroke hemiparesis. The test group will have two categories: the first consisting of healthy subjects, and the second one by subjects with post-stroke hemiparesis. Both groups will perform an initial trajectory without the aid of a walker, and another one with its assistance. This route is a straight line, in a flat ground. After training with the walker, volunteers participating repeat the trajectory using the device. The robotic walker is equipped with 3D force sensors in the forearm support, which can confirm the correct weight applied to it. It also can deduce the subject's movement intentions, through the efforts made by his/her upper limbs. Spatio-temporal parameters of gait using inertial sensors will be analyzed. These sensors will be placed in specific points of the subject's legs, and a laser scanning sensor will be located in the center of the walker in order to get distances to the legs. Electromyography (EMG) electrodes will be also placed on the subject's legs to evaluate the muscle activity and energy consumption during the gaits. After analyzing the data, the results will be compared between the two groups and between the gaits before and after the training. The results might be useful for the process of rehabilitation of post-stroke patients, and in normal and hemiparetic gait.