Tem: Therapeutic Exercise Machine for Hip and Knee Joints of Spastic Patients

Abstract: The Therapeutic Exercise Machine (TEM) is a newly developed exercise machine for the hip and knee joints of spastic patients. This study aims at evaluating the short-term effects of Continuous Passive Range of Motion Exercise (CPROM-E) on passive resistive torque of the hip and knee in spastic patients and in normal subjects. During the CPROM-E in 40 individual sessions, TEM carried out CPROM-E of the lower extremity copying the therapists’ initial motion, and recorded the load torque of each subject’s hip joint and the integrated EMG (I-EMG) of the subject’s quadriceps femoris and hamstrings. In the normal subjects, the peak torque of the hip significantly decreased by 5 percent, and the peak amplitude of I-EMG was not always reduced. In the spastic patients, the peak torque significantly decreased by 35 percent, and the peak amplitude of IEMG significantly decreased after exercise on TEM. These results suggest that CPROM-E with TEM may have beneficial effects in the management of spasticity.