Effect of Task-specific Training on Gait Parameters in Hemiparetic Stroke Patients

Functional mobility is viewed as essential to enabling an individual to engage in full range of life areas and is central to enabling the individual to participate in live situations. The walking after stroke is characterized by slow gait speed, poor endurance and in the quality and adaptability of walking patterns. The instantaneous adaptation to speed and load changes during over ground locomotion has major implication for mobility after stroke. Task specific training is a therapeutic approach based on System theory given by Berstein in 1967 to retrain the patients with movement disorders. It is a one group pre test post test quasi experiment design with the objective of to find out the effectiveness of task specific training on gait parameters in right hemiparetic patients. 10 right hemiparetic patients (n=10) of either sex in the age group of 40-65 yrs (mean age 54.44 yrs) were selected by convenient sampling method and were assigned in one group. Different tasks in a prefixed pattern aiming at functional activities were introduced over a period of 40 min duration per day/session, 3 days a week and for total duration of 4 weeks. i.e. total 12 sessions. Main outcome measures: Changes were measured in terms of Cadence, Step length, Stride length and Gait Velocity. Significant statistical improvement was measured in terms of cadence (P= 0.038) step length and gait velocity (P= 0.033) whereas there is no significant statistical improvement in Step length (P= 0.140) and Stride length (P= 0.162).