Ankle rehabilitation robot training for stroke patients with foot drop: Optimizing intensity and frequency.

Only 36 patients, 9 per group, at a single centre. A difference of a few degrees in range or a couple of FMA-LE points could easily shift with a larger sample. Three weeks of training. Whether the gains hold at 3 months or 6 months is unknown. Only two levels of frequency and two levels of resistance were tested. You do not know what happens at 3 sessions per day or at 3 Nm. No gait speed, balance, or muscle activation data. The FMA-LE is a clinical scale, not a measure of how the patient actually walks. Patients and therapists were not blinded, and the therapists delivered the conventional rehabilitation alongside the robot sessions. All groups received 4 hours per day of conventional stroke rehabilitation. The robot's independent contribution cannot be separated from standard care. Session duration was fixed at 20 minutes for every group, so the effect of longer or shorter sessions is unknown.

The ankle robot was manufactured by Guangdong Minkai Medical Robotics Co., Ltd. (Zhuhai, China). No explicit funding statement or conflict-of-interest declaration appears in the text provided.

Do not read these results as proof that the ankle robot alone improves foot drop. All 36 patients also received 4 hours per day of conventional stroke rehabilitation (physiotherapy and occupational therapy) throughout the 3 weeks, so the robot's independent contribution cannot be separated from standard care. With only 9 patients per group, the differences between the four protocols may not hold up in a larger sample.