One year of training with FES has impressive beneficial effects in a 36-year-old woman with spinal cord injury

Abstract

These impressive improvements demonstrate that FES training offers several interesting clinical benefits in a patient with SCI.

The Performance of Aerobic Exercising by Spinal Cord Injury Patients Through the Application of Functional Electrical Stimulation

“…Draghici et al (2017) found that in a hybrid FESrowing training, there was low force generated by the lower body preventing enough loading of the legs which may have limited improvement in bone formation. Deley et al (2017) however did find an increase in bone mineral density after 12 months of FES rowing, this may be due to a more intense training procedure with increased bone loading and a longer duration. Perret et al (2010) found that there is higher physical and caloric demand doing FES-rowing in comparison to FEScycling suggested by a higher peak oxygen consumption value.…”

“…Oxygen consumption measured during FES-rowing increased from the first month of training to the twelfth month from 18.1 to 28.6 mL•min -1 •kg -1 (Deley, 2017). When comparing arms only rowing to rowing with FES, peak ventilation was similar for both exercises.…”

“…Changes in aerobic capacity and weekly total work in FES row training (Taylor, 2011) Body composition and muscle structure was seen to change after the training procedure. Muscle thickness increased by 136% along with thigh circumference by 14% from baseline levels to the end of 12 months of training (Deley, 2017). The total body mass and lean muscle mass significantly increased from 153.22 ± 9.32 to 157.76 ± 9.11 lb.…”

“…Evidence from another study also showd an increase in lean mass from 50.4 ± 9.4 to 53.3 ± 10.0 kgwhere p = 0.001, but percent body fat was reduced from 239 ± 8.5 to 20.4 ± 7.9 % where p = 0.028 after 6 weeks of trainig (D-I Kim, 2014). Muscle area (left: p = 0.9, right: p = 0.48),fat area (left: p = 0.63, right: p = 0.73), and intramuscular fat (left: p = 0.62, right: p = 0.81) of the left and right quadriceps muscle did not significantly change in response to neromuscular electrical stimulation training (Erickson, 2017. Although bone mineral density showed an increase by 19.4% post-training in a study conducted by Deley et al (2017), Griffin et al (2009) concluded there was no significant difference in bone or adipose tissue following 10 weeks of training. Near the end of cycling training, the change in oxygen-Hemoglobin (oxy-Hb) after active cycling differed between able-bodied and SCI patients.…”

“…There was also an increase in left ventricular mass (LVM) which changed from 110 ± 6 to 118 ± 2 g, and a decrease in relative wall thickness in diastole (RWTd) which went from 0.37 ± 0.01 to 0.35 ± 0.01 cm (Gibbons, 2016). Evoked torque had a big increase at the onset of rowing training during the first three months by 154%, and a small decrease was seen in the last three months by -11% in a 12-month training procedure (Deley, 2017). When constant frequency trains (CFT pattern) was used as the first pattern for training, it needed a lower stimulus intensity (76 ± 5 mA) to produce 50% of the maximal force (Figure 4) compared to using variable frequency trains (VFT pattern) as the first pattern for training (112 ± 3 mA) where p < 0.05 (Deley, 2015).…”