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Evaluation of FES-induced knee joint moments in paraplegics with denervated muscles.

Gallasch E, Rafolt D, Kinz G, Fend M, Kern H, Mayr W

Department of Systems Physiology, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria. eugen.gallasch@meduni-graz.at

The pendulum test was applied to evaluate functional electrical stimulation (FES)-induced joint moments in paraplegics with denervated muscles. Therefore a manipulandum was connected to the knee joint and programmed to elicit gravity-induced leg oscillations. The FES-induced output torque was compensated for in order to keep the leg in a mean vertical position (knee angle 90 degrees ). A second-order dynamical model was applied to extract the elastic and viscous moments from the recorded leg oscillations. This model provided an almost adequate description of the relaxed and FES-contracted states. In the relaxed state the elastic moment was 15.3 +/- 2.37 Nm/rad and the viscous moment was 0.41 +/- 0.21 Nms/rad. The FES-induced elastic moment was 29.4 +/- 28.5 Nm/rad and the FES-induced viscous moment was 1.53 +/- 1.03 Nms/rad (N = 10, before FES-training).

Published 23 February 2005 in Artif Organs, 29(3): 207-11.
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