A team of researchers evaluated the literature about therapeutic benefits of performing daily activities with passive, quasi-passive, and active ankle-foot prostheses in people with unilateral lower-limb amputations. They concluded that quasi-passive and active prostheses were favored over passive prostheses based on biomechanical, physiological, performance, and subjective measures in the short-term.
Using the Pubmed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Pedro databases, and backward citations until November 3, 2021, the researchers synthesized participants’ characteristics, type of prosthesis, intervention, outcome, and main results, and conducted risk of bias assessment. Only English-written randomized controlled trials, cross-sectional, cross-over, and cohort studies were included when the population comprised individuals with a unilateral transfemoral or transtibial amputations wearing passive, quasi-passive, or active ankle-foot prostheses. The intervention and outcome measures had to include any aspect of quality of life assessed while performing daily activities. The researchers identified 4,281 records and included 34 studies.
The authors of the review suggested future research to investigate the long-term therapeutic benefits of prosthetics devices.
The open-access study, “Therapeutic benefits of lower limb prostheses: a systematic review,” was published in the Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation.
