Sensory feedback restoration in leg amputees improves walking speed, metabolic cost and phantom pain
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Date
2019-09
Publication Type
Journal Article
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yes
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Abstract
Despite advances in the development of lower-limb prosthetics, the potential benefits of restoring sensory feedback from such devices to transfemoral (above-knee) or transtibial (below-knee) amputees has not been investigated. Most surgery techniques and noninvasive methods to restore sensory feedback have been tested only in transtibial amputations, which produce a less disabling clinical condition than transfemoral amputation. Direct neural stimulation through transversal intrafascicular multichannel electrodes (TIMEs) has enabled upper-limb amputees to feel touch sensations from the missing hand and to exploit them for long-term prosthesis control. Only a few trials with direct nerve stimulation that did not show clear benefits for the leg amputees have been conducted. Restoring sensory feedback from the phantom hand of upper-limb amputees through neural stimulation has been shown to decrease phantom limb pain (PLP). However, the efficacy of low-frequency nerve stimulation has never been investigated for treating PLP in leg amputees.
In this study, we recruited two volunteers with transfemoral amputation as a consequence of traumatic events (Supplementary Table 1). These volunteers were implanted with four TIMEs in the nearest portion of the residual tibial nerve to the amputation for more than 90 d each (top right in Fig. 1 and Extended Data Fig. 1).
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published
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Journal / series
Volume
25 (9)
Pages / Article No.
1356 - 1363
Publisher
Nature
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Software
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Subject
Chronic pain; Somatic system; Touch receptors; Translational research
Organisational unit
09632 - Raspopovic, Stanisa (ehemalig) / Raspopovic, Stanisa (former)
Notes
It was possible to publish this article open access thanks to a Swiss National Licence with the publisher.
Funding
759998 - Restoring natural feelings from missing or damaged peripheral nervous system by model-driven neuroprosthesis (EC)