Estimating pushrim temporal and kinetic measures using an instrumented treadmill during wheelchair propulsion: A concurrent validity study.

Using ground reaction forces recorded while propelling a manual wheelchair on an instrumented treadmill may represent a valuable alternative to using an instrumented pushrim to calculate temporal and kinetic parameters during propulsion. Sixteen manual wheelchair users propelled their wheelchair equipped with instrumented pushrims (i.e., SMARTWheel) on an instrumented dual-belt treadmill set a 1m/s during a 1-minute period. Spatio-temporal (i.e., duration of the push and recovery phase) and kinetic measures (i.e. propulsive moments) were calculated for 20 consecutive strokes for each participant. Strong associations were confirmed between the treadmill and the instrumented pushrim for the mean duration of the push phase (r=0.98) and of the recovery phase (r=0.99). Good agreement between these two measurement instruments was also confirmed with mean differences of only 0.028s for the push phase and 0.012s for the recovery phase. Strong associations were confirmed between the instrumented wheelchair pushrim and treadmill for mean (r=0.97) and peak (r=0.96) propulsive moments. Good agreement between these two measurement instruments was also confirmed with mean differences of 0.50Nm (mean moment) and 0.71Nm (peak moment). The use of a dual-belt instrumented treadmill represents an alternative to characterizing temporal parameters and propulsive moments during manual wheelchair propulsion.
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