Fes cycling

Abstract

Many research with functional electrical stimulation (FES) has been done to regain mobility and for health benefits. Better results have been reported for FES-cycling than for FES-walking. The majority of the subjects during such research are people with a spinal cord injury (SCI), cause they often lost skin sensation. Besides using surface stimulation also implanted stimulators can be used. This solves the skin sensation problem, but needs a surgery. Many physiological effects of FES-cycling has been reported, e.g., increase of muscles, better blood flow, reduction of pressure ulcers, improved self-image and some reduction of bone mineral density (BMD) loss. Also people with an incomplete SCI benefit by FES-cycling, e.g. cycling time without FES, muscle strength and also the walking abilities increased. Hybrid exercise gives an even better cardiovascular training. Presently 4 companies are involved in FES-cycling. They all have a stationary mobility trainer. Two of them also use an outdoor tricycle. One combined with voluntary arm cranking. By optimizing the stimulation parameters the power output and fatigue resistance will increase, but will still be less compared to voluntary cycling.nema