Stance control KAFOs (SCKAFOs) ensure knee stability by locking during stance and allowing knee flexion during swing. A team of researchers investigated the Fior & Gentz NEURO TRONIC knee joint system on safety outcomes, net energy cost, and user experiences in people already using an Ottobock E-MAG Active SCKAFO and concluded that both devices were safe in terms of knee joint locking, while locking and unlocking failures were frequent with both devices.
Significant improvements with the NEURO TRONIC SCKAFO were found for ankle power, perceived walking effort, and reported falls. The net energy cost with the NEURO TRONIC SCKAFO decreased, although not significantly, by 8.2 percent, likely due to insufficient power, the study’s authors wrote.
The authors were affiliated with the University of Amsterdam and Amsterdam Movement Sciences. A convenience sample of ten subjects with flaccid lower-limb muscle weakness due to neuromuscular disorders who were already using an E-MAG Active SCKAFO were provided with a newly fabricated NEURO TRONIC SCKAFO.
Outcomes included knee joint locking failures and unlocking failures (i.e., percentage of steps the knee joint failed to lock/unlock) when walking under challenging conditions on an instrumented treadmill while wearing a safety harness; net energy cost assessed with a six-minute walk test at comfortable speed; 3D gait kinematics and kinetics; and patient-reported outcomes.
The open-access study, “Safety, walking ability, and satisfaction outcomes of the NEURO TRONIC stance-control knee-ankle-foot orthosis (SCKAFO): A comparative evaluation to the E-MAG active SCKAFO,” was published in Prosthetics and Orthotics International.
