Robotic assisted gait as a tool for rehabilitation of individuals with spinal cord injury: a systematic review.
Ledycnarf J Holanda, Patrícia M M Silva, Thiago C Amorim and 3 others
PMID 29202845WHAT IT FOUND
Robotic gait training for spinal cord injury was described as helping walking, cardiorespiratory, sensory and functional outcomes, but this review did not compare devices or show that a device causes a specific outcome.
Key findings
01The search yielded 2941 records, and 39 articles using robotic devices for spinal cord injury rehabilitation were included.
02The included articles were organized by robotic device features and by outcome type, including cardiorespiratory, reflex, kinetic and kinematic, and sensory and motor parameters.
03The review included studies in English, Portuguese and Spanish, and excluded reviews, duplicates and not full articles.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
The review includes studies independent of publication year, so older and newer devices and protocols are mixed together. A device shown in the review had not yet been published with SCI patients, so the device list may not reflect clinical evidence for every system. The review lists device features and outcome categories, but the supplied text does not present a quality assessment, a combined effect number, or a direct comparison of devices.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the reported gains as proof that robotic gait training is better than conventional therapy or that a particular device caused them. The review describes features and outcome categories, not a combined treatment comparison.