Many patients with spinal injures are confined to wheelchairs, leading to a sedentary lifestyle with secondary pathologies and increased dependence on a carer. Increasing evidence has shown that training using devices such as Reciprocating Gait Orthoses (RGO) reduces the incidence of these secondary pathologies, but the physical effort involved in this training is such that there is poor compli...

AIM Ankle-foot orthoses are the standard of care for foot drop in cerebral palsy (CP), but may overly constrain ankle movement and limit function in those with mild CP. Functional electrical stimulation (FES) may be a less restrictive and more effective alternative, but has rarely been used in CP. The primary objective of this study was to conduct the first trial in CP examining the acceptabili...

BACKGROUND Spinal cord injury patients walk with a flexed trunk when using reciprocating gait orthoses. Reduction of trunk flexion during ambulation may produce an improvement in gait parameters for reciprocating gait orthosis users. OBJECTIVES To investigate the effect on kinematics and temporal-spatial parameters when spinal cord injury patients ambulate with an advanced reciprocating gait ...

The F-scan system was used to study plantar foot pressure in patients with a pronated foot type. Inshoe measurements were made under the first metatarsal head and medial heel with and without an orthotic in an extra depth shoe. The F-scan system was also used to compare the total contact area under the foot between each patient with and without the orthotic device. Data collected in this study ...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the influence of a custom foot orthotic intervention on the lower extremity dynamics in healthy runners. DESIGN Three-dimensional kinematics and kinetics were collected on 15 female runners (>15 miles per week) while each performed the over-ground running trials in either a shoe only or a shoe+custom foot orthotic condition. Kinematic and kinetic variables were analyz...

BACKGROUND The effectiveness of bracing on preventing curve progression in coronal plane for mild and moderate adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) patients has been confirmed by previous radiographic researches. However, a hypokyphotic effect on the sagittal plane has been reported by a few studies. A relatively increasing number of AIS patients were noticed to wear a new kind of elastic orth...

Lower limb orthotic intervention is considered as an important element in the rehabilitation of the patients with stroke. Hemiplegic gait are widely used by clinicians to describe a pattern of limb movement and body posture for the patients with stroke. This gait pattern is dangerous to the patients as it is an unstable walking pattern and has a high risk of fall. Application of ankle foot orth...

BACKGROUND Altered foot function is common in individuals with rheumatoid arthritis. Plantar pressure distributions during gait are regularly assessed in this patient group; however, the association between frequently reported magnitude-based pressure variables and clinical outcomes has not been clearly established. Recently, a novel approach to the analysis of plantar pressure distributions th...

result in better outcomes for patients. Systematic MEDLINE search, search of the Cochrane database and of informal sources . .was .performed .for .the .motor .rehabilitation .of .the .upper .and .lower .extremity .function . .For .the .upper .extremity . 40 references were identified that evaluate training therapy or neuromuscular electrical stimulation for arm paresis after stroke and describe...