Researchers conducted a systematic review about the therapeutic benefits of performing daily activities with passive, quasi-passive, and active ankle-foot prostheses in people with a lower-limb amputations. The authors concluded that compared to passive ankle-foot prostheses, quasi-passive and active prostheses significantly enhanced the user’s quality of life based on biomechanical, physiological, performance, and subjective measures in the short-term. They suggested future research to investigate the long-term therapeutic benefits of prosthetic devices as no studies were found that did so.
The researchers searched the Pubmed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Pedro databases, and conducted backward citations until November 3, 2021. They identified 4,281 records and included 34 studies.
The open-access study, “Therapeutic benefits of lower limb prostheses: a systematic review,” was published in the Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation.