Two-Week Rehabilitation with Auditory Biofeedback Prosthesis Reduces Whole Body Angular Momentum Range during Walking in Stroke Patients with Hemiplegia: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Dai Owaki; Yusuke Sekiguchi; Keita Honda; Shin-Ichi Izumi

doi:10.3390/brainsci11111461

Two-Week Rehabilitation with Auditory Biofeedback Prosthesis Reduces Whole Body Angular Momentum Range during Walking in Stroke Patients with Hemiplegia: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Brain Sci. 2021 Nov 3;11(11):1461. doi: 10.3390/brainsci11111461.

Authors

Dai Owaki¹, Yusuke Sekiguchi², Keita Honda², Shin-Ichi Izumi^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Robotics, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, Miyagi 980-8579, Japan.
² Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Graduate School of Medicine, Tohoku University, Miyagi 980-8575, Japan.
³ Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, Tohoku University, Miyagi 980-8575, Japan.

Abstract

Walking rehabilitation is challenging in stroke patients with sensory impairments. In this study, we examined the two-week effect of an auditory biofeedback prosthesis, Auditory Foot (AF), on the change in the frontal whole body angular momentum (WBAM) range, before and after a two-week walking rehabilitation. We conducted a pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT). We employed statistical Bayesian modeling to understand the mechanism of the rehabilitation effect and predict the expected effect in new patients. The best-performing model indicated that the frontal WBAM range was reduced in the AF group by 12.9-28.7%. This suggests that the use of kinesthetic biofeedback in gait rehabilitation contributes to the suppression of frontal WBAM, resulting in an improved walking balance function in stroke patients.

Keywords: auditory biofeedback; effect prediction; statistical modeling; stroke; two-week rehabilitation effect; walking rehabilitation.