Rehabilitation and Therapy Commons^™

Variable-Frequency-Train Stimulation Of Skeletal Muscle After Spinal Cord Injury, C. Scott Bickel, Jill Slade, Leslie R. Vanhiel, Gordon L. Warren, Gary A. Dudley

Physical Therapy Faculty Publications

Skeletal muscle, after spinal cord injury (SCI), becomes highly susceptible to fatigue. Variable-frequency trains (VFTs) enhance force in fatigued human skeletal muscle of able-bodied (AB) individuals. VFTs do this by taking advantage of the "catch-like" property of skeletal muscle. However, mechanisms responsible for fatigue in AB and SCI subjects may not be the same, and the efficacy of VFT stimulation after SCI is unknown. Accordingly, we tested the hypothesis that VFT stimulation would augment torque-time integral in SCI subjects. The quadriceps femoris muscle was stimulated with constant frequency trains (CFTs) (six 200 s square wave pulses separated by 70 ms) …