Ongoing project
Comprehensive approach to gait rehabilitation in persons post-stroke
Current physical therapy to improve walking after a stroke follows two distinct approaches: high-intensity aerobic exercise to increase walking speed or feedback-based interventions to improve movement patterns. With this project we will test the impact of combining these approaches. Specifically, we will study people who have had a stroke as they walk at different aerobic exercise intensities (i.e. different percentages of their heart rate maximum) and use visual feedback to correct their movement patterns. We anticipate that this work will demonstrate that multiple features of walking post-stroke can be treated with a single intervention. Characterizing the interaction between feedback- and intensity-based gait training approaches in this way will inform the design of a larger-scale exploration of their combined efficacy to treat multiple domains of walking dysfunction post-stroke.
This project is funded by the Magistro Family Foundation Research Grant by the Foundation for Physical Therapy Research.
Kristan Leech (PI) was recently interview about this new project. The article can be found here.
Interested in participating? Learn more about it below or click here!