User assessment of manual wheelchair ride comfort and ergonomics.

OBJECTIVE: To examine wheelchair-user perceived ride comfort during propulsion and to compare the ride comfort of ultralight and lightweight manual wheelchairs. An ultralight wheelchair is defined as having a high degree of adjustability, whereas a lightweight wheelchair has minimal adjustability.

DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS: Repeated measures design of a sample of 30 community-dwelling manual wheelchair users evaluating 7 different manual wheelchairs over an activities of daily living course.

SETTING: A rehabilitation engineering center.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Subject ratings of perceived ride comfort and basic ergonomics while propelling over the activities of daily living course. Ratings were recorded for each wheelchair on individual tasks and for the course overall.

RESULTS: The Invacare Action XT wheelchair was ranked best for both ride comfort and basic ergonomics. The ride-comfort scores (p < .05) and wheelchair ergonomics ratings (p < .05) for the ultralight wheelchair group were significantly different from those for lightweight wheelchair group.

CONCLUSION: There are differences in perceived ride comfort and basic ergonomics between the designs of the wheelchairs (lightweight vs ultralight). Subjects perceived that ultralight wheelchairs were more comfortable and had better basic ergonomics than lightweight wheelchairs.