Purpose: Shoulder injuries to wheelchair tennis players are often linked to the serve. This study aims to investigate the characteristics of serve motion in wheelchair tennis players. We compared the shoulder angle and muscle activations during serve motion of wheelchair and non-wheelchair tennis players.
Subjects: Eight wheelchair tennis players participated in this study.
Methods: A six-camera 250 Hz Vicon motion analysis system and surface electromyography were employed to record the serve of eight wheelchair tennis players. Student's t-test was used to determine statistically significant differences between the serve motions of wheelchair and non-wheelchair tennis players.
Results: At maximum external rotation of the racket arm, wheelchair tennis players had a significantly lower shoulder external rotation angle and a larger abduction and horizontal adduction than non-wheelchair tennis players. At ball-racket impact, wheelchair tennis players had a significantly lower shoulder abduction angle and a larger horizontal adduction than non-wheelchair tennis players. In addition, in the forward-swing phase, the anterior deltoid was more active and the posterior deltoid was less active than that in non-wheelchair tennis players. Furthermore, the pectoralis major was not significant.
Conclusion: These results indicate that wheelchair tennis players serve in an unstable shoulder position compared to non-wheelchair tennis players. This suggests that wheelchair tennis players are more prone to shoulder injury than non-wheelchair tennis player. In addition, a wheelchair tennis player may biomechanically suffer shoulder injuries during the serve motion.

View full abstract

Purpose: The aim of this study was to determine the possible existence of locomotor respiratory coupling (LRC) and examine the effect of imposing LRC on ventilation and gas exchange responses during arm ergometry exercise.
Methods: Ten healthy subjects performed incremental exercise testing to determine exercise intensity. Arm ergometry exercise with constant work loads was then carried out either under spontaneous breathing or with different entrainment breathings in which respiration/cranking frequency (f_r/f_c ratio) were fixed at 1/1, 2/3, 1/2, 2/5 and 1/3.
Results: During spontaneous breathing, all the subjects exhibited the various f_r/f_c, the most commonly observed f_r/f_c was 2/5 under spontaneous breathing. The imposed LRC patterns did not significantly affect the actual LRC rate. Still, dead space ventilation ratio was significantly reduced at ratio of 2/5 and 1/3, respectively.
Conclusions: These results suggest that the entrainment patterns during arm ergometry exercise was similar to that seen in studies of pedaling exercise, but to a much less extent. In addition, the ventilatory efficiency was affected by f_r/f_c independent of actual LRC apparent rate.

View full abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify major risk factors of the falls of the patients with stroke whom live at home by analyzing patients' information and functional evaluation tools data such as FIM (Functional Independence Measure) instrument and SIAS (Stroke Impairment Assessment Set).
Methods: Sixty-four stroke outpatients who had earlier discharged from Fujita Health University Nanakuri Sanatorium were participated in our study. We evaluated the following baseline characteristics for all patients: age, sex, stroke type, affected side of the body, number of stroke suffered, maximum walking speed, use of ankle foot orthosis, use of cane, use of medicine that may increase the risk of falling, and frequency of the falls of the patient during their rehabilitation period in the hospital, FIM, SIAS, and Mini-Mental State Examination scoring were also done before their discharge from the hospital. We first carried out bivariate analysis to determine which variables differed significantly between the non-fallers and fallers. Those variables of significant statistical values were then included in a multivariate logistic regression analysis. The model was simplified in a Forward Selection Method (Likelihood Ratio) by removing variables.
Results: Those patients with a falling experience comprised 25 patients out of the total 64 patients (39.1%). The logistic model was refined until it excluded all the predictors except two. These two predictors were maximum walking speed, and use of ankle foot orthosis.
Conclusions: Those patients with a slow speed of walking and/or the patients who required the use of ankle foot orthosis were at a higher risk of falling.

View full abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to test whether the plasticity changes of the primary motor cortex (M1), which has been proposed as a neural basis of motor learning, was induced by mirror therapy.
Methods: We investigated by using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in 12 neurologically healthy subjects. Each subject was asked to rotate two cork-balls in a counter-clockwise direction with non-dominant hand as fast and accuracy as possible and the number of ball-rotation was counted for 30 seconds. After measuring the motor behavior and TMS (Pre), subjects practiced Motor-training intervention of the right hand with mirror visual feedback (MVF) superimposed on the left hand using a mirror box (Post1). Furthermore, the beneficial effects of MVF were disrupted by the continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS), which is a procedure to suppress local cortical function, over M1 and the occipital cortex (OC) (Post2). Subjects were randomly assigned with the M1 (n = 8) and OC group (n = 8) by the site where cTBS was applied. Finally, both groups performed another set of mirror therapy intervention (Post3).
Results: Mirror therapy significantly improved the motor behavior and increased the excitability in M1. In addition, the motor behavior and cortical excitability were transiently suppressed by cTBS in M1 group but not in OC group. However, subsequent mirror therapy following cTBS could improve the motor behavior and cortical excitability, again.
Conclusion: These results have suggested that the cause-effect link between the M1 activity and behavioral improvement in MVF-induced motor learning.

View full abstract

Purpose: This is an expanded version of the study “Selecting Technical Vocabulary in the Field of Physical Therapy and Determining its Characteristics”, which previously appeared in this journal. The aim of this study is to identify the features of English in the field of physical therapy from the viewpoint of collocational patterns.
Method: We examined collocational patterns in the two corpora created for the previous study (RA corpus: 397,874 words, PT text corpus: 546,666 words). The heads of collocation for analysis were combinations of adverb+verb, verb+noun, and adjective+noun. In each head, two-word units which co-occur three times or more were extracted from the two corpora. A mutual information score of the units was calculated to identify whether there are unique collocational patterns which have stronger connections in texts in the physical therapy field. Mutual information shows the expected probability of co-occurrence. The higher score tell us the stronger attraction between the words.
Results: In all heads, there are combinations of two words showing high scores in common across the two corpora.
Conclusion: Knowledge of collocation is vital to improve reading ability. Learning collocational patterns observed in the two corpora will be an effective strategy to increase the speed of understanding physical therapy texts.

View full abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of the different joint angles and traction forces, especially to indicate the maximally loose-packed position by analyzing the change of joint space width (separation distance) that accompanies the traction of knee joint.
Method: The subjects were 18 healthy adult subjects (9 male and female, average age of 25.1 years old). The method was to tug their right knees toward long axis direction of the right lower leg with 7 levels of joint angle (completely extended position, 25, 35, 45, 55, 70, 90 degrees) and 2 levels of traction force (100・200N), and analyzed the separation distance by examining the ultrasound images of the joint spaces.
Result: With 100 N, 55 degrees flexion angle showed greater separation distance than completely extended position. With 200 N, the distance are larger with 25, 35, 45, and 55 degrees than completely extended position, and 45 and 55 degrees showed greater separation distance than 90 degrees. Based on the regression formula of the relationship between the joint angle and separation distance with 200 N, the knee angle that shows the maximum separation was estimated as 51 degrees.
Conclusion: The study showed that separation distance is larger with 200 N than 100 N. It also suggested that maximally loose-packed position of a normal knee joint is about 51 degrees.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract