Ankle-foot orthosis improves walking ability of hemiplegic patients:a Meta-analysis / 中国组织工程研究

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND:Studies have shown that ankle-foot orthosis can increase the feedback on the input information from receptors in the skin of the foot and leg to improve the ankle joint position sense, and promote brain function reorganization. OBJECTIVE:To systematical y evaluate the effect of ankle-foot orthosis on the improvement of walking in hemiplegic patients. METHODS:The Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, CNKI, WanFang Data and VIP database were searched for reports of randomized control ed trials of ankle-foot orthosis to improve walking ability in hemiplegic patients, from the date of establishment of each database to June 2013. The randomized control ed trials which met the criteria were included for the Meta-analysis. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:A total of 9 randomized control ed trials involving 456 patients were included. Meta-analysis showed that, compared with conventional treatment and drug therapy, ankle foot orthosis via the continuous treatment shows certain advantages to improve lower extremity motor function in hemiplegic patients, life skil s and 10-meter maximum walking speed. Due to a limited number of included documents, the remaining indicators such as walking speed, stride difference and balance function were only for appropriate descriptive analysis. The results suggested that, by improving abnormal gait, walking speed, stride frequency, gait cycle, space asymmetry, ankle muscle spasms and balancing, the ankle-foot orthosis could achieve the goal of improving walking function. Ankle-foot orthoses could not be confirmed to exert the role in the fol owing indicators, including time asymmetry, double support phase prolongation and stride length. This evidence shows that ankle-foot orthoses in hemiplegic patients may promote recovery of motor function of the lower limbs and activities of daily living to a certain extent, but the more high-quality, multi-center randomized control ed trials with large samples are necessary.