Electrical stimulation to reduce the overload in upper limbs during sitting pivot transfer in paraplegic: a preliminary study

Abstract

Transfer is a key ability and allows greater interact with the environment and social participation. Conversely, paraplegics have great risk of pain and injury in the upper limbs due to joint overloads during activities of daily living, like transfer. The main goal of this study is to verify if the use of functional electrical stimulation (FES) in the lower limbs of paraplegic individuals can assist the sitting pivot transfer (SPT). The secondary objective is to verify if there is a greater participation of the lower limbs during lift pivot phase. A preliminary study was done with one complete paraplegic individual. Temporal parameters were calculated and a kinetic assessment was done during the SPT. The preliminary results showed the feasibility of FES for assisting the SPT.