Article

PURPOSE: To evaluate the clinical efficacy of functional electrical stimulation
(FES) therapy of the tibialis anterior (TA) muscle on gait restoration and
enhancing motor recovery with stroke patients.
METHOD: Thirty hemiparetic
participants with spastic foot-drop impairments who were at least 3 months
post-stroke were recruited from a rehabilitation institute and were assigned
either to a control group or a FES group. Both the groups participated in a
conventional stroke rehabilitation program for 60 min per day, 5 days a week, for
12-weeks. The FES group received the electrical stimulation to the TA muscle for
correction of foot-drop. RESULTS: Functional electric stimulation (FES) resulted
in a 26.3% (p < 0.001) improvement of walking speed measured with 10-m walkway,
whereas the improvement in the control group was only 11.5% (p < 0.01). The FES
group also showed significantly greater improvements compared to control group in
other gait parameters (e.g. cadence, step length), physiological cost index
(PCI), ankle range of motion, spasticity of calf muscle, Fugl-Meyer scores, and
the maximum value of the root mean square (RMS(max)), which reflects the capacity
of the muscle output. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that, the FES therapy
combined with conventional therapy treatment more effectively improves the
walking ability and enhances the motor recovery when compared with conventional
therapy alone in stroke survivors.

Langue : ANGLAIS