Spinal cord injury (SCI) results in alterations in the postural control system. It is well-known that an efficient postural control is of utter importance for standing and for walking, as well as for providing support to the voluntary movements during daily life activities. Furthermore, trunk stability has been identified as the third most important achievement in treatment that can substantially improve the patient’s quality of life.
Learning Objectives:
• To describe trunk control alterations in SCI and to identify the advantages and disadvantages of the most used evaluation tools (clinical and instrumented).
• To learn application of a validated clinical trunk control test as an evaluating and predicting tool for gait and independence in SCI.
• To recognize some finished and on-going research about interventions to improve trunk control in spinal cord injury.
• To plan a research line using as example the one we have built on trunk control in SCI and start a collaboration network.
Description:
A brief revision of the trunk control alterations in SCI will be carried out as introduction.
A comprehensive description of the most used clinical and instrumented evaluation tools focusing on advantages and disadvantages depending on the objectives of the evaluation will be carried out. A systematic review of the interventions to improve trunk control in spinal cord injury will be presented then.
Finally, to conclude we will share the design and results of our research line that includes the following studies:
• Proposal and Validation of clinical trunk control test in individuals with spinal cord injury (published article, Spinal Cord, 2014).
• Trunk control test as an early predictor of gait and independence in individuals with spinal cord injury (published article, Journal of Spinal Cord Injury, 2018).
• Validation of the instrumented evaluation of trunk control in individuals with spinal cord injury (on revision)
• Effect of training in a kayak ergometer on trunk control, independence and cardiovascular function in individuals with spinal cord injury (on-going research).