Stiffness

Chris­ti­na Krieger¹, Ole Strenge², Cars­ten Dilthey³, Julia­ne Wühr⁴, David Hochmann², Cars­ten Kramer¹, Ulrich Hafkemeyer⁵
This artic­le descri­bes the deve­lo­p­ment and test­ing of a modu­lar test­ing ortho­sis as a tool for ever­y­day cli­ni­cal prac­ti­ce. The ortho­sis allows for varia­ti­on in stiff­ness around the ank­le joint and the meta­tar­so­phal­an­ge­al joints, as well as adjus­t­ment of the neu­tral ang­le at the ank­le joint. It is inten­ded to ser­ve as a tool for sel­ec­ting ortho­tic con­fi­gu­ra­ti­ons that best meet the indi­vi­du­al tre­at­ment goals of pati­ents. In an initi­al stu­dy, the ortho­sis was tes­ted on a sub­ject with lower-limb-pre­do­mi­nant spas­tic hemi­pa­re­sis and a retro­gra­de gait pat­tern. The fun­da­men­tal appli­ca­bi­li­ty of the con­cept in rou­ti­ne cli­ni­cal prac­ti­ce was con­firm­ed. The results form the basis for fur­ther rese­arch on objec­ti­ve decis­i­on-making and the appli­ca­ti­on of the fin­dings to defi­ni­ti­ve treatments.