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A Review of Functional Electrical Stimulation Treatment in Spinal Cord Injury

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Abstract

Functional electrical stimulation (FES) has been widely adopted to elicit muscle contraction in rehabilitation training after spinal cord injury (SCI). Conventional FES modalities include stimulations coupled with rowing, cycling, assisted walking and other derivatives. In this review, we studied thirteen clinical reports from the past 5 years and evaluated the effects of various FES aided rehabilitation plans on the functional recovery after SCI, highlighting upper and lower extremity strength, cardiopulmonary function, and balder control. We further explored potential mechanisms of FES using the Hebbian theory and lumbar locomotor central pattern generators. Overall, FES can be used to improve respiration, circulation, hand strength, mobility, and metabolism after SCI.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Johns Hopkins Welch Medical Library Informationist Mr. Robert Wright, MLS for providing his expertise and assistance with the PubMed database search. We would also like to acknowledge the contributions of Ms. Alisa Brown, Mr. Michael Pozin, Ms. Nausheen Tickoo, and Ms. Shichen Zhang for their efforts of preliminary literature search and data mining. The illustrations of this article were created with Biorender.com following an academic licensing agreement.

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Author notes

  1. Shiyu Luo and Haonan Xu have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Shiyu Luo & Angelo H. All

  2. Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Haonan Xu

  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Yi Zuo

  4. Institute for NanoBioTechnology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Haonan Xu & Yi Zuo

  5. Department of Chemistry, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Xiaogang Liu

  6. The N.1 Institute for Health, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Xiaogang Liu

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  1. Shiyu Luo
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  4. Xiaogang Liu
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Contributions

AA, SL, HX and YZ contributed to the conception and design. SL, HX and YZ performed literature search and data analysis. SL and HX drafted the paper. XL provided critical revision of the work. AA supervised and reviewed this study.

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Correspondence to Xiaogang Liu or Angelo H. All.

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Luo, S., Xu, H., Zuo, Y. et al. A Review of Functional Electrical Stimulation Treatment in Spinal Cord Injury. Neuromol Med 22, 447–463 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12017-019-08589-9

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