Biomechanics Commons^™

Evaluating Foot-Drop Interventions For Multiple Sclerosis Using A Multimodal System, Laura Marie Byrnes-Blanco

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores how multimodal walking impacts quantitative and qualitative aspects of gait for persons with multiple sclerosis (pwMS) experiencing foot-drop. Foot-drop can dramatically impede mobility and clinicians routinely prescribe ankle-foot-orthosis (AFO) and functional electrical stimulation (FES) devices to alleviate its impacts on daily life. However, little is known about how these devices affect pwMS while traversing environments with real-world complexity. To explore this topic, an interventional, parallel assigned study was conducted. A realistic nature pathway containing changes in floor pitch, audiovisual stimulation, and during-trial tasks (for dual-tasking) was generated in an immersive virtual reality system called CAREN: Computer Assisted …