New outcome measures for subjects with incomplete spinal cord injury

This book presents two new outcome measures for patients with incomplete spinal cord injury. The Figure of Eight Test is a walking test that incorporates curve-walking and challenging situations like obstacles or cognitive distraction. It is a valid assessment tool in healthy subjects as well as subjects with incomplete spinal cord injury, and it adds information to the current gold standard, the 10m Walk Test. The Reaction and Execution Test is a lower extremity response time test, which is performed in a standing position. Subjects have to move their leg as fast as possible to one of five buttons in response to respective flashing lights. The test showed good validity and reliability in patients with incomplete spinal cord injury and correlated significantly with several strength and ambulatory functional outcome measures. Using the latter test, we also demonstrate that well-recovered subjects with incomplete spinal cord injury still suffer from motor deficits, although they showed similar strength values compared to a matched able-bodied group. Both outcome measures are also evaluated in a pilot randomized clinical trial comparing strength training with automated gait training.