Abstract
Manual wheelchair propulsion results in physical demand of the upper limb extremities that, because of its repetitive nature, can lead to chronic pathologies on spinal cord injury patients. The aim of this study was to design and test a methodology to compare kinematic and kinetic variables of the upper limb joints when propelling different wheelchairs. Moreover, this methodology was used to analyze the differences that may exist between paraplegic and tetraplegic patients when propelling two different wheelchairs. Five adults with paraplegia and five adults with tetraplegia performed several propulsion tests. Participants propelled two different wheelchairs for three minutes at 0.833 m/s (3 km/h) with one minute break between the tests. Kinematic and kinetic variables of the upper limb as well as variables with respect to the propulsion style were recorded. Important differences in the kinetic and kinematic variables of the joints of the upper limb were found when comparing paraplegic and tetraplegic patients. Nevertheless, this difference depends on the wheelchair used. As expected, in all tests, the shoulder shows to be the most impacted joint.
Highlights
Life expectancy of people who suffer from a spinal cord injury has increased during the last decades thanks to the development of specific treatments, technology evolution, medical care and rehabilitation techniques
With respect to the temporal–spatial variables shown in Table 6, no differences that show significance between paraplegic and tetraplegic groups are found; there is no impact coming from the wheelchair used
This study proved that the methodology proposed is appropriate to accomplish kinematic and kinetic studies on different populations of spinal cord injury patients
Summary
Life expectancy of people who suffer from a spinal cord injury has increased during the last decades thanks to the development of specific treatments, technology evolution, medical care and rehabilitation techniques. This has led to research on the chronic conditions of patients with spinal cord injury [1]. For people with a spinal cord injury, the upper extremities play a more important role, in propelling the wheelchair, and in performing other activities such as transfers. This requires more frequent use and more loads on these extremities
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