Functional Electrical Stimulation of Ankle Plantarflexor and Dorsiflexor Muscles. Effects on Poststroke Gait

Background and Purpose— Functional electrical stimulation (FES) is a popular poststroke gait rehabilitation intervention. Although stroke causes multijoint gait deficits, FES is commonly used only for the correction of swing-phase foot drop. Ankle plantarflexor muscles play an important role during gait. The aim of the current study was to test the immediate effects of delivering FES to both ankle plantarflexors and dorsiflexors on poststroke gait. Methods— Gait analysis was performed as subjects (N=13) with chronic poststroke hemiparesis walked at their self-selected walking speeds during walking with and without FES. Results— Compared with delivering FES to only the ankle dorsiflexor muscles during the swing phase, delivering FES to both the paretic ankle plantarflexors during terminal stance and dorsiflexors during the swing phase provided the advantage of greater swing-phase knee flexion, greater ankle plantarflexion angle at toe-off, and greater forward propulsion. Although FES of both the dorsiflexo...