Assessment of the strength of the lower limb muscles in subjects with stroke with portable dynamometry: a literature review

Introduction: Weakness of the lower limb muscles, which are the main impairments after stroke, is associated with reduced mobility and decreased performance in functional tasks. Therefore, the assessment of strength of these muscles is necessary, which is commonly assessed with portable dynamometry. Aims: To perform a literature review regarding the methods used to assess lower limb strength with portable dynamometry in subjects with stroke and to describe its investigated measurement properties with this population. Materials and Methods: An extensive search was performed on the MEDLINE, SCIELO, LILACS, and PEDro databases, by combining specific key words, followed by active manual search by two independent researchers. Results and Discussion: Thirty studies were included, and the muscular groups of the knee (90%) were the most assessed, followed by the ankle (66.7%) and hip (63.3%) joints. In 5% of the studies, * JCM: MSc, e-mail: [email protected] LTA: MSc, e-mail: [email protected] EML: MSc, e-mail: [email protected] JBM: grad, e-mail: [email protected] LACS: MSc, e-mail: [email protected] LFTS: PhD, e-mail: [email protected] CDCM: PhD, e-mail: [email protected]