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

Functional mobility is viewed as essential to enabling anindividual to engage in full range of life areas and is centralto enabling the individual to participate in live situations.The walking after stroke is characterized by slow gaitspeed, poor endurance and in the quality and adaptabilityof walking patterns. The instantaneous adaptation tospeed and load changes during over ground locomotionhas major implication for mobility after stroke. Taskspecific training is a therapeutic approach based onSystem theory given by Berstein in 1967 to retrain thepatients with movement disorders.It is a one group pre test post test quasi experiment designwith the objective of to find out the effectiveness of taskspecific training on gait parameters in right hemipareticpatients.10 right hemiparetic patients (n=10) of either sex in theage group of 40-65 yrs (mean age 54.44 yrs) were selectedby convenient sampling method and were assigned inone group. Different tasks in a prefixed pattern aiming atfunctional activities were introduced over a period of 40min duration per day/session, 3 days a week and for totalduration of 4 weeks. i.e. total 12 sessions.Main outcome measures: Changes were measured interms of Cadence, Step length, Stride length and GaitVelocity.Significant statistical improvement was measured in termsof cadence (P= 0.038) step length and gait velocity (P=0.033) whereas there is no significant statisticalimprovement in Step length (P= 0.140) and Stride length(P= 0.162).