These results indicate incidences of falls during turning following stroke may not be due to impaired movement patterns but due to the many other factors that are associated with falls, such as deficits in cognitive processes--attention or central integration--and/or sensory deficits.
Impairments in gait coordination may be a factor in falls and mobility limitations after stroke. Therefore, rehabilitation targeting gait coordination may be an effective way to improve walking post-stroke. This review sought to examine current treatments that target impairments of gait coordination, the theoretical basis on which they are derived and the effects of such interventions. Few high quality RCTs with a low risk of bias specifically targeting and measuring restoration of coordinated gait were found. Consequently, we took a pragmatic approach to describing and quantifying the available evidence and included non-randomised study designs and limited the influence of heterogeneity in experimental design and control comparators by restricting meta-analyses to pre- and post-test comparisons of experimental interventions only. Results show that physiotherapy interventions significantly improved gait function and coordination. Interventions involving repetitive task-specific practice and/or auditory cueing appeared to be the most promising approaches to restore gait coordination. The fact that overall improvements in gait coordination coincided with increased walking speed lends support to the hypothesis that targeting gait coordination gait may be a way of improving overall walking ability post-stroke. However, establishing the mechanism for improved locomotor control requires a better understanding of the nature of both neuroplasticity and coordination deficits in functional tasks after stroke. Future research requires the measurement of impairment, activity and cortical activation in an effort to establish the mechanism by which functional gains are achieved.
Functional electrical stimulation and ankle foot orthoses have an equally positive therapeutic effect on walking speed in non-progressive central nervous system diagnoses. The current randomized controlled trial evidence base does not show whether this improvement translates into the user's own environment or reveal the mechanisms that achieve that change. Future studies should focus on measuring activity, muscle activity and gait kinematics. They should also report specific device details, capture sustained therapeutic effects and involve a variety of central nervous system diagnoses.
Data suggest that, in contrast to assumptions that predict FES superiority, ankle foot orthoses have equally positive combined-orthotic effects as FES on key walking measures for foot-drop caused by stroke. However, further long-term, high-quality RCTs are required. These should focus on measuring the mechanisms-of-action; whether there is translation of improvements in impairment to function, plus detailed reporting of the devices used across diagnoses. Only then can robust clinical recommendations be made.
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