Search

Background: People with incomplete spinal cord injury (iSCI) often have gait impairments that negatively affect daily life gait performance (i.e., ambulation in the home and community setting) and quality of life. They may benefit from light-weight lower extremity exosuits that assist in walking, such as the Myosuit (MyoSwiss AG, Zurich, Switzerland). A previous pilot study showed that participants with various gait disorders increased their gait speed with the Myosuit in a standardized environment. However, the effect of a soft exosuit on daily life gait performance in people with iSCI has not yet been evaluated., Objective: The primary study objective is to test the effect of a soft exosuit (Myosuit) on daily life gait performance in people with iSCI. Second, the effect of Myosuit use on gait capacity and the usability of the Myosuit in the home and community setting will be investigated. Finally, short-term impact on both costs and effects will be evaluated., Methods: This is a two-armed, open label, randomized controlled trial (RCT). Participants will be randomized (1:1) to the intervention group (receiving the Myosuit program) or control group (initially receiving the conventional program). Thirty-four people with chronic iSCI will be included. The Myosuit program consists of five gait training sessions with the Myosuit at the Sint Maartenskliniek. Thereafter, participants will have access to the Myosuit for home use during 6 weeks. The conventional program consists of four gait training sessions, followed by a 6-week home period. After completing the conventional program, participants in the control group will subsequently receive the Myosuit program. The primary outcome is walking time per day as assessed with an activity monitor at baseline and during the first, third, and sixth week of the home periods. Secondary outcomes are gait capacity (10MWT, 6MWT, and SCI-FAP), usability (D-SUS and D-QUEST questionnaires), and costs and effects (EQ-5D-5L)., Discussion: This is the first RCT to investigate the effect of the Myosuit on daily life gait performance in people with iSCI., Trial Registration: Clinicaltrials.gov NCT05605912. Registered on November 2, 2022., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Gait data need to be reliable to be valuable for clinical decision-making. To reduce the impact of marker placement errors, the Optimized Lower Limb Gait Analysis (OLGA) model was developed. The purpose of this study was to assess the sensitivity of the kinematic gait data to a standard marker displacement of the OLGA model compared with the standard Vicon Clinical Manager (VCM) model and to determine whether OLGA reduces the errors due to the most critical marker displacements. Healthy adults performed six gait sessions. The first session was a standard gait session. For the following sessions, 10mm marker displacements were applied. Kinematic data were collected for both models. The root mean squares of the differences (RMS) were calculated for the kinematics of the displacement sessions with respect to the first session. The results showed that the RMS values were generally larger than the stride-to-stride variation except for the pelvic kinematics. For the ankle, knee and hip kinematics, OLGA significantly reduced the averaged RMS values for most planes. The shank, knee and thigh anterior-posterior marker displacements resulted in RMS values exceeding 10°. OLGA reduced the errors due to the knee and thigh marker displacements, but not the errors due to the ankle marker displacements. In conclusion, OLGA reduces the effect of erroneous marker placement, but does not fully compensate all effects, indicating that accurate marker placement remains of crucial importance for adequate 3D-gait analysis and subsequent clinical decision-making., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)