Haptic vs sensorimotor training in the treatment of upper limb dysfunction in multiple sclerosis: A multi-center, randomised controlled trial

Robot-Assisted Upper Limb Training for Patients with Multiple Sclerosis: An Evidence-Based Review of Clinical Applications and Effectiveness

“…After the databases were searched, 320 records were identified, of which 29 were assessed for full-text screening eligibility. Finally, ten studies were included in the qualitative analysis that verified the effect of robotic therapy in the upper limb rehabilitation in PwMS [16,[29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. A summary of the search and study selection process is shown in Figure 1.…”

“…A summary of the characteristics and results of the included studies are reported in Table 1. The ten selected studies included one systematic review [16]; four RCTs [29,30,32,33]; one randomized crossover study [35]; and four case series [31,34,36,37]. A summary of the characteristics and results of the included studies are reported in Table 1.…”

“…In the studies that reported this information [30,32,37], the most affected arm was usually selected for robot-assisted training. In PwMS, both end-effectors [29,32,33,[35][36][37], a passive exoskeleton [31,34], and a hand robot [30] have been used in rehabilitation so far. The Braccio di Ferro, a planar robotic manipulandum with 2 degrees of freedom that can assist or contrast patients during a reaching task with either resistive, assistive, or perturbating force fields was the most tested device in this population [29,33,35,36].…”

“…In PwMS, both end-effectors [29,32,33,[35][36][37], a passive exoskeleton [31,34], and a hand robot [30] have been used in rehabilitation so far. The Braccio di Ferro, a planar robotic manipulandum with 2 degrees of freedom that can assist or contrast patients during a reaching task with either resistive, assistive, or perturbating force fields was the most tested device in this population [29,33,35,36]. The Amadeo ® (Tyromotion-Austria), a hand robotic device with each finger attached to the robotically driven slide, was used in a recent RCT [30].…”

“…Overall, 161 PwMS (EDSS 4.5-8; 29 primary progressive, 81 secondary progressive, 49 relapsing-remitting, and 2 relapsing-progressive) were included in the clinical studies. The RCTs included, respectively, 22 [33], 17 [32], 44 [30], and 36 [29] patients. Eight patients were included in the crossover study [35], and the remaining 34 patients were included in the four case series studies [31,34,36,37].…”