Clinical assessment of muscle spasticity in stroke patients with surface electromyography and isokinetic assessment

【Objective】To assess the spasticity of muscle in stroke patients with the surface electromyography (sEMG) and isokinetic assessment. 【Methods】In this study 16 stroke patients and 16 health persons were involved. All subjects took continuous passive motion of ankle at the angular velocity at 10°/s and 30°/s for 5 repeated times,after 3 minutes'rest, the same procedure was repeated. The affected limb of the patients and the same side of the health persons were taken for the test. The RMS (root mean square) value of gastrocnemius surface electromyographic signal, peak torque and peak torque/body weight of isokinetic assessment were recorded. 【Results】No significant differences were found in all subjects'data between the first test and the second test (P 0.05). At the angular velocity of 30°/s, the RMS value of gastrocnemius showed no significant difference between the observation group and the control group (P 0.05), while all the remaining data of the two groups showed significant difference (P 0.05). 【Conclusion】Surface electromyography and isokinetic assessment can be used to estimate muscle spasticity of stroke patients in clinic, and both are reliable.