NeuroMuscular Electrical Stimulation to Facilitate Perturbation-based REACtive Balance Training for Fall Risk Reduction Post-stroke: The REACTplusNMES Trial
Methods: Forty-six individuals with chronic stroke will be recruited and screened for determining their eligibility for the study. Once enrolled, they will be randomized into either of the two groups: intervention group (23 participants) and control group (23 participants). Both groups will undergo series of pre-training assessments which includes a postural disturbance in the form of a slip- or trip-like perturbations and walking tests in laboratory environment. After the pre-training assessment, individuals will undergo 6-weeks of training (2 hour per session, 2 sessions per week). The intervention group will receive NMES with the REACT training and the control group will receive ShamNMES. NMES will be applied to the different muscle groups of the paretic lower limb using an advanced software which is able to synchronize muscle activation with the time of perturbation onset and according to the phases of gait. After training, both groups will again be tested on all the assessments performed pre training. This study will help us understand the immediate therapeutic and mechanistic effects of REACT+NMES and inform stroke rehabilitation research and clinical practice. Our study will provide foundational evidence for future use of NMES to implement clinically applicable neuromodulation adjuvants to reactive balance training, which could be leveraged for designing more effective future interventions for fall-risk reduction.
• Age group: 18-90 years.
• Presence of hemiparesis.
• Onset of stroke (\> 6 months).
• Ability to walk at least for 2 minutes on the treadmill with or without ankle foot orthosis.
• Can understand and communicate in English.
• Cognitively and behaviorally capable of complying with the regimen (Mini-Mental State Examination \> 25/30).
• No history or recent use (i.e., past 6 weeks) of any Neuromuscular electrical stimulation device to leg muscles during walking (e.g., Bioness, Walkaide).