Rehab Centers: Assessment and Diagnosis of Musculoskeletal Shoulder Disorders Over the Internet.

Assessment and Diagnosis of Musculoskeletal Shoulder Disorders over the Internet.

Filed under: Rehab Centers

Int J Telemed Appl. 2012; 2012: 945745
Steele L, Lade H, McKenzie S, Russell TG

Shoulder disorders are common, debilitating, and represent a considerable burden on society. As primary contact practitioners, physiotherapists play a large role in the management and rehabilitation of people with these conditions. For those living outside of urban areas, however, access to physiotherapy can be limited. The aim of this study was to evaluate the validity and reliability of using a telerehabilitation system to collect physical examination findings and correctly identify disorders of the shoulder. Twenty-two participants with 28 shoulder disorders were recruited and underwent a face-to-face physical examination and a remote telerehabilitation examination. Examination findings and diagnoses from the two modes of assessment were used to determine validity and reliability of the new method. Diagnostic agreement and agreement on individual findings between the two methods were found to be consistent with the reliability of conventional assessment methods. This study provides important preliminary findings on the validity and reliability of musculoskeletal examinations conducted via telerehabilitation.
HubMed – rehab

 

Constrained Blind Source Extraction of Readiness Potentials from EEG.

Filed under: Rehab Centers

IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng. 2012 Nov 15;
Ahmadian P, Sanei S, Ascari L, Gonzalez Villanueva L, Umilta MA

One of the changes seen in Electroencephalography (EEG) data preceding human voluntary movement is a cortical potential called Readiness Potential (RP). Detection of this potential can benefit researchers in clinical neurosciences for rehabilitation of malfunctioning brain and those working on brain computer interfacing to develop a suitable mechanism to detect the intention of movement. Here a constrained blind source extraction (CBSE) is attempted for detection of RP. A suitable constraint is defined and applied. The results are also compared with those of the traditional blind source separation (BSS) in terms of true positive rate, false positive rate and computation time. The results show that the CBSE approach in overall has superior performance.
HubMed – rehab

 

Leveraging Social Supports for Improving Personal Expertise on ACL Reconstruction and Rehabilitation.

Filed under: Rehab Centers

IEEE Trans Inf Technol Biomed. 2012 Oct 26;
Fan J, Peng J, Zheng N

In this paper, a social health support system is developed to assist both ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) patients and clinicians on making better decisions and choices for ACL reconstruction and rehabilitation. By providing a good platform to enable more effective sharing of personal expertise and ACL treatments, our social health support system can allow: (1) ACL patients to identify the best-matching social groups and locate the most suitable expertise for personal health management; and (2) clinicians to easily locate the best-matching ACL patients and learn from well-done treatments, so that they can make better decisions for new ACL patients (who have similar ACL injuries and close social principles with those best-matching ACL patients) and prescribe safer and more effective knee rehabilitation treatments.
HubMed – rehab

 

Adaptive Impedance Control of a Robotic Orthosis for Gait Rehabilitation.

Filed under: Rehab Centers

IEEE Trans Syst Man Cybern B Cybern. 2012 Nov 10;
Hussain S, Xie SQ, Jamwal PK

Intervention of robotic devices in the field of physical gait therapy can help in providing repetitive, systematic, and economically viable training sessions. Interactive or assist-as-needed (AAN) gait training encourages patient voluntary participation in the robotic gait training process which may aid in rapid motor function recovery. In this paper, a lightweight robotic gait training orthosis with two actuated and four passive degrees of freedom (DOFs) is proposed. The actuated DOFs were powered by pneumatic muscle actuators. An AAN gait training paradigm based on adaptive impedance control was developed to provide interactive robotic gait training. The proposed adaptive impedance control scheme adapts the robotic assistance according to the disability level and voluntary participation of human subjects. The robotic orthosis was operated in two gait training modes, namely, inactive mode and active mode, to evaluate the performance of the proposed control scheme. The adaptive impedance control scheme was evaluated on ten neurologically intact subjects. The experimental results demonstrate that an increase in voluntary participation of human subjects resulted in a decrease of the robotic assistance and vice versa. Further clinical evaluations with neurologically impaired subjects are required to establish the therapeutic efficacy of the adaptive-impedance-control-based AAN gait training strategy.
HubMed – rehab

 

Interrater reliability and construct validity of the Posture and Postural Ability Scale in adults with cerebral palsy in supine, prone, sitting and standing positions.

Filed under: Rehab Centers

Clin Rehabil. 2012 Nov 28;
Rodby-Bousquet E, Agústsson A, Jónsdóttir G, Czuba T, Johansson AC, Hägglund G

Objective:To evaluate reliability, internal consistency and construct validity of the Posture and Postural Ability Scale for adults with cerebral palsy.Design:Psychometric evaluation of a clinical assessment tool.Setting:Rehabilitation centres in Sweden and Iceland.Subjects:Thirty adults with cerebral palsy aged 19-22 years, six people at each level I-V of the Gross Motor Function Classification System.Main measures:The Posture and Postural Ability Scale contains a 7-point ordinal scale for postural ability in supine, prone, sitting and standing, and items for assessment of posture. Posture and postural ability was rated from photos and videos by three independent assessors. Interrater reliability was calculated using weighted kappa. Internal consistency was analysed with Cronbach’s alpha if item deleted and corrected item-total correlation. Construct validity was evaluated based on known groups, using Jonckheere Terpstra for averaged values of the three raters relative to the Gross Motor Function Classification System.Results:There was an excellent interrater reliability (kappa = 0.85-0.99) and a high internal consistency (alpha = 0.96-0.97, item-total correlation = 0.60-0.91). Median values differed (P < 0.02) between known groups represented by the levels of gross motor function, showing construct validity for all items.Conclusion:The Posture and Postural Ability Scale showed an excellent interrater reliability for experienced raters, a high internal consistency and construct validity. It can detect postural asymmetries in adults with cerebral palsy at all levels of gross motor function. HubMed – rehab

 

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