Recommendations for clinical decision-making when offering exoskeletons for community use in individuals with spinal cord injury.
Derrick Onate, Cassandra Hogan, Kathryn Fitzgerald, Kevin T White, Keith Tansey
PMID 39206134WHAT IT FOUND
Expert recommendations outline when to consider home exoskeletons for people with spinal cord injury.
The paper reports no original study results, so it does not show whether exoskeletons improve outcomes.
What this paper is
This is a clinical guidance paper presenting expert recommendations and a proposed decision-making algorithm for offering personal powered exoskeletons to people with spinal cord injury. It summarizes prior literature and FDA criteria but reports no original methods or results, so there is no original finding to act on.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the proposed algorithm as evidence that exoskeletons improve walking, pain, bowel function, or quality of life. It is expert guidance based on prior literature, not original results.