Whole-Body Adaptive Functional Electrical Stimulation Kinesitherapy Can Promote the Restoring of Physiological Muscle Synergies for Neurological Patients

Abstract

Background: Neurological diseases and traumas are major factors that may reduce motor functionality. Functional electrical stimulation is a technique that helps regain motor function, assisting patients in daily life activities and in rehabilitation practices. In this study, we evaluated the efficacy of a treatment based on whole-body Adaptive Functional Electrical Stimulation Kinesitherapy (AFESK™) with the use of muscle synergies, a well-established method for evaluation of motor coordination. The evaluation is performed on retrospectively gathered data of neurological patients executing whole-body movements before and after AFESK-based treatments. Methods: Twenty-four chronic neurologic patients and 9 healthy subjects were recruited in this study. The patient group was further subdivided in 3 subgroups: hemiplegic, tetraplegic and paraplegic. All patients underwent two acquisition sessions: before treatment and after a FES based rehabilitation treatment at the VIKTOR Physio Lab. Patients followed whole-body exercise protocols tailored to their needs. The control group of healthy subjects performed all movements in a single session and provided reference data for evaluating patients’ performance. sEMG was recorded on relevant muscles and muscle synergies were extracted for each patient’s EMG data and then compared to the ones extracted from the healthy volunteers. To evaluate the effect of the treatment, the motricity index was measured and patients’ extracted synergies were compared to the control group before and after treatment. Results: After the treatment, patients’ motricity index increased for many of the screened body segments. Muscle synergies were more similar to those of healthy people. Globally, the normalized synergy similarity in respect to the control group was 0.50 before the treatment and 0.60 after (p < 0.001), with improvements for each subgroup of patients. Conclusions: AFESK treatment induced favorable changes in muscle activation patterns in chronic neurologic patients, partially restoring muscular patterns similar to healthy people. The evaluation of the synergic relationships of muscle activity when performing test exercises allows to assess the results of rehabilitation measures in patients with impaired locomotor functions.

Biomedical Sensors for Functional Mapping: Techniques, Methods, Experimental and Medical Applications

“…Next, the paper “Whole-Body Adaptive Functional Electrical Stimulation Kinesitherapy Can Promote the Restoring of Physiological Muscle Synergies for Neurological Patients” [ 9 ] introduces a novel treatment approach, Adaptive Functional Electrical Stimulation Kinesitherapy (AFESK™), for neurological patients using whole-body adaptive functional electrical stimulation kinesitherapy. This treatment shows promise in restoring physiological muscle synergies, enhancing motor functionality, and improving rehabilitation outcomes.…”

Improvement of motor imagination and manual hability through virtual reality, selective and non-selective functional electrical stimulation: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial (Preprint)

“…Among the most used techniques are: mirror therapy, virtual reality or augmented reality [4]. Although it has been studied less, it has also been shown that the use of electrical stimulation could help improve MI parameters in this type of pathologies [5].…”