**Poster 469 Effect of Lower Limb End-Effector Robot-Assisted Therapy With Body Weight-Support vs Treadmill Gait Training in Parkinson's Patients

This study introduces the development of a new body weight support system using pneumatic actuators for gait training. The main scope of this work is to provide a new design, validation, and assessment for active body weight support systems to reproduce a subject’s normal walking behavior. Based on the assessments and its evaluations, the novel body weight support system using pneumatic muscle actuators shows many advantageous characteristics, such as simplicity, low cost, maintenance of a constant unloading force, and ease of control of the supported force. The capability of the novel body weight support system to generate unloading forces that track the center of pressure, because it switches from left to right and vice versa as the subject walks, is especially interesting.

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Advantage in muscle activation in gait with support of body weight in spinal cord injury

Fisioterapia em Movimento ◽

10.1590/1980-5918.031.ao29 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 31 (0) ◽

Author(s):

Jéssica Saccol Borin ◽

Tânia Valdameri Capelari ◽

Melissa Grigol Goldhardt ◽

Márcia Cristina Issa ◽

Diego Antônio Pereira Bica dos Santos ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Spinal Cord ◽

Spinal Cord Injury ◽

Body Weight ◽

Muscle Activation ◽

Gait Training ◽

Treadmill Training ◽

Body Weight Support ◽

Weight Support ◽

Cord Injury ◽

Injured Patients

Abstract Introduction: The locomotor training with body weight support has been proposed as an alternative for the rehabilitation of people with spinal cord injury, in order to develop most of the residual potential of the body. Objective: To compare the levels of muscle activation of the main muscle involved in gait during body weight-supported treadmill training and body weight-supported overground training in incomplete spinal cord injured patients. Methods: It was a prospective cross-sectional study, in which 11 incomplete injured patients were submitted to two modalities of gait with body weight support, the first one on the treadmill (two different speeds: 1 and 4km/h), and the second one with the walker on fixed floor. The electromyographical acquisition was done in the rectus femoris (RF), vastus medialis (VM), vastus lateralis (VL) and gluteus maximus (GM). Results: There was a greater muscle activation of all muscles analyzed in the treadmill training as compared to the over groundtraining, both at 4 km/h (RF: p=0.00), (VM: p=0.00), (VL: p=0.00) e (GM: p=0.00) and at 1km/h (RF: p=0.00), (VM: p=0.00), (VL: p=0.00) e (GM: p=0.00). When comparing the two modalities of treadmill training, at 4 and 1km/h, there was no statically significant difference between them (RF: p=0.36), (VM: p=1.00), (VL: p=1.00) e (GM: p=0.16). Conclusion: The gait training with body weight support is more effective in activating the muscles involved in the gait training on treadmill compared to overground training in patients with incomplete spinal cord injury.

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