Automatic gait evoking in healthy adults through Vojta's peripheric somatosensory stimulation: a double-blind randomized controlled trial.
Luis Perales-López, Ismael Sanz-Esteban, Camen Jiménez-Antona and 4 others
PMID 39354570WHAT IT FOUND
Vojta reflex stimulation evoked automatic walking in 24 of 30 healthy adults told not to move; other groups walked 0 m.
The evoked gait was slow and short-strided.
Key findings
01A single Vojta session produced automatic gait in 24 of 30 healthy adults; none of the treadmill, Motomed or control participants did.
02The evoked automatic gait was less than voluntary walking: distance 13.45 m versus 432.23 m, stride length 13.20 cm versus 30.21 cm, and time for the first 3 m 93.80 s versus 4.11 s.
03Compared with the other groups, the Vojta group post-intervention averaged 9.0 m walked and 126.4 s for the first 3 m, while the other groups averaged 0.0 m and 0.0 s.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
The participants were healthy adults, not people with neurological disorders or gait impairment, so the study does not show what happens in clinical rehabilitation. The intervention was a single session, and medium-term effects were not studied. The outcome was automatic gait under a do-not-move command, not functional walking improvement; the evoked gait was slower and shorter than voluntary gait. Only 19 of 30 Vojta participants completed at least one full automatic gait cycle, and the pattern was not kinematically ideal. Sampling was non-probabilistic consecutive cases from the Universidad Europea de Madrid, and the paper states there were no prior studies to compare the findings with.
Declared interests
The paper states funding from Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC).
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that Vojta therapy improves walking in patients. The study was in healthy adults, the measured gait was reflexive under a do-not-move command, and the automatic pattern was slow, short-strided and not kinematically ideal.