2019 Volume 10 Pages 1-8
Goto S, Oguchi K, Hoshino T, Ikeuchi T, Asai T, Ota Y, Ogawa T, Ito T, Otaka E. Effects of Balance Exercise Assist Robot (BEAR) in independently mobile patients by disease. Jpn J Compr Rehabil Sci 2019; 10: 1-8.
Objective: To examine, by disease type, the effects before and after the use of the Balance Exercise Assist Robot (BEAR) training system.
Methods: Nineteen independently mobile patients who had used the BEAR system were evaluated for the outcome measures of the Mini-Balance Evaluation Systems Test (Mini-BESTest), comfortable walking speed, tandem gait speed, timed up-and-go test (TUG), functional reach test (FRT) and muscular strength test. The subjects were classified by disease, with five having spinal cord disease, nine with supratentorial stroke, and five with infratentorial stroke. The Wilcoxon signed rank test was used for comparison between before and after BEAR training sessions. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient was used to assess the relationship between the BEAR game level and the disease.
Results: TUG improved in spinal cord disease, in comparison between before and after BEAR training sessions. Comfortable walking speed, tandem gait speed and TUG improved in supratentorial stroke. Comfortable walking speed improved in infratentorial stroke. The Mini-BESTest improved in all the diseases. The attained game level was lower in infratentorial stroke than in spinal cord disease.
Discussion: We consider that BEAR training was highly effective in supratentorial stroke for improving the balance. On the other hand, the attained game level was low in infratentorial stroke, but we presume that the balance index would improve with repeated exercise at the appropriate level of difficulty.
