Developing trends of transcutaneous functional electrical stimulation for hand function reconstruction after spinal cord injury / 中国组织工程研究

ABSTRACT

A spinal cord injury at a level above T1 often results in a partial or complete loss of the hand function. Transcutaneous functional electrical stimulation is a method to stimulate the handicapped limb muscle by low frequency impulsive current to generate muscle contraction. The immediate effect can replace or correct the lost function to promote function reconstruction through adjusting high-level nerve center and improve daily activity. Functional electrical stimulation provides a efficient therapy for the rehabilitation of patients with spinal injury, and brings a hope to improve the quality of life of paraplegina patients. However, transcutaneous functional electrical stimulation requires assistance to place the equipment on the patients and technical support. Both patients and their families often have too high expectations from this therapy, and become disappointed since the results are not satisfactory. Therefore, we should continue to carry out studies on the parameters and equipments of functional electrical stimulation, and renovate the stimulator to make it more convenient and efficient.