The H2 robotic exoskeleton for gait rehabilitation after stroke: early findings from a clinical study

But is 12 sessions enough to walk without it for 100% recovery? Unknown? WHEN THE HELL WILL YOU COME UP WITH THAT ANSWER? Otherwise this is useless.

 

The H2 robotic exoskeleton for gait rehabilitation after stroke: early findings from a clinical study

 
JournalofNeuroEngineeringandRehabilitation
 (2015) 12:54
DOI 10.1186/s12984-015-0048-y
RESEARCH OpenAccess
 The H2 robotic exoskeleton for gaitrehabilitation after stroke: early findings from aclinical study
Magdo Bortole
1,2*
, Anusha Venkatakrishnan
2,4
, Fangshi Zhu
2
, Juan C Moreno
1
, Gerard E Francisco
3
,Jose L Pons
1
and Jose L Contreras-Vidal
2
Abstract
Background:
 Stroke significantly affects thousands of individuals annually, leading to considerable physical impairment and functional disability. Gait is one of the most important activities of daily living affected in stroke survivors. Recent technological developments in powered robotics exoskeletons can create powerful adjunctive tools for rehabilitation and potentially accelerate functional recovery. Here, we present the development and evaluation of a novel lower limb robotic exoskeleton, namely H2 (Technaid S.L., Spain), for gait rehabilitation in stroke survivors.
Methods:
 H2 has six actuated joints and is designed to allow intensive overground gait training. An assistive gait control algorithm was developed to create a force field along a desired trajectory, only applying torque when patients deviate from the prescribed movement pattern. The device was evaluated in 3 hemiparetic stroke patients across 4 weeks of training per individual (approximately 12 sessions). The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of Houston. The main objective of this initial pre-clinical study was to evaluate the safety and usability of the exoskeleton. A Likert scale was used to measure patient’s perception about the easy of use of the device.
Results:
 Three stroke patients completed the study. The training was well tolerated and no adverse events occurred.Early findings demonstrate that H2 appears to be safe and easy to use in the participants of this study. The overground training environment employed as a means to enhance active patient engagement proved to be challenging and exciting for patients. These results are promising and encourage future rehabilitation training with a larger cohort of patients.
Conclusions:
 The developed exoskeleton enables longitudinal overground training of walking in hemiparetic patients after stroke. The system is robust and safe when applied to assist a stroke patient performing an overground walking task. Such device opens the opportunity to study means to optimize a rehabilitation treatment that can be customized for individuals.
Trial registration:
 This study was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT02114450).
Keywords:
 Exoskeleton, Gait, Rehabilitation, Lower limb, Stroke
*Correspondence: m.bortole@csic.es1Neural Rehabilitation Group, Cajal Institute, Spanish Research Council, Av.Doctor Arce 37, 28002 Madrid, Spain2Noninvasive Brain-Machine Interface Systems Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Houston, N308 EngineeringBuilding I, 77204-4005 Houston, USAFull list of author information is available at the end of the article
© 2015 Bortole et al. 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 credited. 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.