Comparative study between the effects of biofeedback and traditional physical therapy methods on the upper limb functional activity of the head and spinal cord injured patients

ABSTRACT

Thirty six volunteers participated in this study, 20 of them suffered from spinal cord injury, and the other 16 patients suffered from head injury. The patients were randomly divided into two groups. Group I was treated by traditional physical therapy methods [balances, endurances, co-ordination exercise,. etc.] while, group II was treated by the same traditional physical therapy methods as group I plus biofeedback training. The treatment program for all patients continued for 14 weeks [3 times/week]. Evaluation was done three times. The evaluation have been done for 10 functional activities by using certain scale. At the end of the treatment statistical analysis between the first and last evaluation have been done, which showed significant improvement in the functional activity for all patients in each group, while there was nonsignificant difference between the two groups