Walking ability of spinal cord injury individuals: How to improve it?

BACKGROUND: Subjects with Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) should use various assistive devices to stand and walk. Unfortunately they suffer from slow walking speed, high energy consumption, and too much force applied on upper limb while walking. The aim of this study was to determine the gap between the gait performance of SCI and normal subjects to conclude how the performance of SCI can be improved.

METHOD: Three groups of SCI walked with orthosis, SCI walked without orthosis, and normal subjects were recruited in this study. The normal subjects also walked with the same orthoses as SCI subjects. Some parameters such as ranges of motion of hip, knee and spatiotemporal gait parameters were evaluated by use of Qualysis motion analysis system. The difference between the gait parameters of three groups were evaluated by use of two sample t test.

RESULTS: The mean values of hip joint range of motion of normal subjects while walking with and without orthosis were 48.3 ± 2.5 and 18.5 ± 8.8 degrees, respectively (p-value = 0.00). There was a significant difference between walking speed of normal subjects with and without orthosis. The walking speed of SCI subject with and without orthosis differed significantly.

CONCLUSION: Although use of orthosis enable SCI subjects to stand and walk, but has some restrictions. As use of orthosis decreased the abilities of normal subjects it can be concluded that more attention should be done on design of orthosis and style of walking.