Adaptive Mobility and Positioning Blog

A newly published scoping systematic review highlights the use of gait trainers in children, adolescents and adults with non-ambulant cerebral palsy.

New evidence in neurorehab points to the importance of intensive overground walking opportunities for individuals recovering from chronic stroke, TBI and SCI.

As a pediatric physical therapist working in public schools, I want my students to move, and to move in the same way their peers do. When Rifton came out with the treadmill gait trainer, I was eager to explore increasing exercise intensity for my teenagers with mobility impairments. I was fortunate enough to get funding for one in my school. I went to the literature to look for protocols using gait treadmills for youth with disabilities and did not find much.

Although integrated into pediatric clinical practice for the last decade, body weight supported treadmill training (BWSTT) continues to be an area of research interest and an evolving intervention. We can see this reflected in a recent study examining effective motor learning strategies for treadmill training. For children with disabilities, the treadmill is a safe place where they can organize their...

Because good clinical evidence on the benefits of gait training is so scarce, we celebrate every contribution we find. Here’s one that specifically explores the effect of dynamic gait training on a child with a spinal cord injury. After sustaining a complete T10 spinal cord injury (SCI) at 23 months old, this child began a walking program six months later. She initially started with a posterior...

Motor learning suggests that practice, repetition and task specificity are instrumental to task improvement. Sometimes extending the practice of therapeutic activities beyond the clinical environment and into the home is a great way to apply these principles and reinforce the gains made in the clinic. Knowing this, I was interested to read a recent study looking at children with cerebral palsy and the...

Long-term disability is a frequent sequel of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and takes the form of persisting motor impairments that impact walking and autonomous movement. So to improve environmental negotiation and basic care skills, independent gait is an essential therapy goal for TBI patients.    Literature shows that the best time for independent gait recovery occurs within the first few...

Gait rehabilitation uses both body weight supported treadmill training and over-ground training to help a client reach their maximum walking potential. With no established clinical indications, choosing between the approaches is a research-based and experience-based decision which factors in the nature of a client’s injury, timing and scope of intervention and projected outcomes. Here are two recent...

Improving gait parameters is a primary goal of therapy intervention. One of these parameters is gait speed because we know there is a link between how fast we walk and how well we interact with our surroundings. (Just notice how frustrated your aging parents become as their gait slows them down.) Simply put, refining gait through therapy ultimately improves speed and boosts quality of life. There are a...

Once again Ginny Paleg, DScPT, MPT and Roslyn Livingstone, MSc have delivered a valuable literature review, this one on the all-important topic of gait training. In the therapy community we’re well aware of the importance of mobility for the developing mind and body. Because children with cerebral palsy at GMFCS levels IV and V are not independently mobile, supportive gait trainers provide critical...