Štiritočkovna dinamična hoja ob uporabi FES (Slovene)

Functional electrical stimulation (FES) has been proven to be an efficient therapeutic and orthotic aid for spinal cord injured (SCI) subjects. These subjects are called paraplegics if there is a complete spinal cord lesion or paraparetics if the lesion is incomplete. Partial restoration of lost locomotory functions is possible in significant part of SCI subjects through the application of FES; some of them are even able to exercise crutch/walker assisted reciprocal gait. Of course such voluntary controlled FES assisted gait is inferior in terms of biomechanics to a normal free gait of a healthy subject. The main drawbacks of such gait are: low average velocity, energy inefficiency, insufficient propulsion forces in the direction of walking and crutch enabled balance control. Some drawbacks can be partially compensated by improving the FES technology, e.g: increasing the number of stimulation channels or fine tuning of stimulation patterns for each subject. However there still reamins a large gap between FES and normal gait. In both gaits we are dealing with the same biomechanical structure consisting of segments and rotational joints but with FES performing a different gait mode. The FES gait is a quadrupedal gait because the subject is utilizing the crutches for balance, partial propulsion and support. Stability requirements, understood as a resistance of the system from tipping over, are fundamentally different in quadrupedal gait. The main hypothesis is that one of the possible ways of improving the existing FES gait is converting the present statically/kinematically stable gait into the gait with kinematically and/or dynamically unstable states. Our primary goal remains increasing the average gait velocity. Crutch supported gait offers higher mobility compared to a wheelchair, e.g. a subject with crutches can walk up- and down stairs, what is the primary reason we are looking into improvement of a crutch assisted gait. The side effect of increasing the gait velocity might also be the improved gait energy efficiency.