Improvement of gait & muscle strength with functional electrical stimulation in sub-acute & chronic stroke patients

The main objective of this work was to evaluate and compare the effects of Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) therapy in the walking ability and muscle strength studied by electromyography (EMG) analysis between subacute and chronic stroke patients. Eighteen consecutive hemiplegic patients suffering from foot drop were assigned either to subacute or chronic group. Patients of both groups´ were treated according to conventional rehabilitation program combined with FES therapy for 12 weeks. At post-treatment, subacute subjects showed a mean increase in walking speed of 29.4% and chronic subjects of 17.1% and the physiological cost index (PCI), with a reduction of 73.1% in subacute subjects and 46.5 % in chronic subjects. Improvement was also found in cadence, step length, and mean-absolute-value (MAV) and root-mean-square (RMS) of EMG signal of tibialis anterior (TA) muscle in both groups, but subacute subjects improved better compared with chronic subjects. Thus we suggested that an early intervention of FES therapy combined with conventional rehabilitation program (CRP) could significantly improve the gait and muscle strength in stroke survivors.