• Media type: E-Article
  • Title: Efficacy of functional electrical stimulation in rehabilitating patients with foot drop symptoms after stroke and its correlation with somatosensory evoked potentials—a crossover randomised controlled trial
  • Contributor: Mijic, Marko; Schoser, Benedikt; Young, Peter
  • imprint: Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2023
  • Published in: Neurological Sciences
  • Language: English
  • DOI: 10.1007/s10072-022-06561-3
  • ISSN: 1590-1874; 1590-3478
  • Keywords: Psychiatry and Mental health ; Neurology (clinical) ; Dermatology ; General Medicine
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  • Description: <jats:title>Abstract </jats:title><jats:sec> <jats:title>Objective</jats:title> <jats:p>The connectivity between somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) and cortical plasticity remains elusive due to a lack of supporting data. This study investigates changes in pathological latencies and amplitudes of SEPs caused by an acute stroke after 2 weeks of rehabilitation with functional electrical stimulation (FES). Furthermore, changes in SEPs and the efficacy of FES against foot drop (FD) stroke symptoms were correlated using the 10-m walk test and foot–ankle strength.</jats:p> </jats:sec><jats:sec> <jats:title>Methods</jats:title> <jats:p>A randomised controlled two-period crossover design plus a control group (group C) was designed. Group A (<jats:italic>n</jats:italic> = 16) was directly treated with FES, while group B (<jats:italic>n</jats:italic> = 16) was treated after 2 weeks. The untreated control group of 20 healthy adults underwent repeated SEP measurements for evaluation only.</jats:p> </jats:sec><jats:sec> <jats:title>Results</jats:title> <jats:p>The repeated-measures ANOVA showed a decrease in tibial nerve (TN) P40 and N50 latencies in group A after the intervention, followed by a decline in non-paretic TN SEP in latency N50 (<jats:italic>p</jats:italic> &lt; 0.05). Moreover, compared to groups B and C from baseline to 4 weeks, group A showed a decrease in paretic TN latency P40 and N50 (<jats:italic>p</jats:italic> &lt; 0.05). An increase in FD strength and a reduction in step cadence in group B (<jats:italic>p</jats:italic> &lt; 0.05) and a positive tendency in FD strength (<jats:italic>p</jats:italic> = 0.12) and step cadence (<jats:italic>p</jats:italic> = 0.08) in group A were observed after the treatment time. The data showed a moderate (<jats:italic>r</jats:italic> = 0.50–0.70) correlation between non-paretic TN latency N50 and step cadence in groups A and B after the intervention time.</jats:p> </jats:sec><jats:sec> <jats:title>Conclusion</jats:title> <jats:p>The FES intervention modified the pathological gait in association with improved SEP afferent feedback.</jats:p> <jats:p>Registered on 25 February 2021 on ClinicalTrials.gov under identifier number: NCT04767360.</jats:p> </jats:sec>