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Updated: Oct 26, 2026
Paradigms of Lower Extremity Electrical Stimulation Training After Spinal Cord Injury
Published on: February 1, 2018
Effects of Epidural Spinal Cord Stimulation on Poststroke Neurological Function: Institutional Experience and a
Xiao-Liang Liu1, Gui-Jun Zhang1, Meng Jiang1
1Department of Neurosurgery, Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Jinan, China.
Objectives:
The literature concerning clinical outcomes following treatment for poststroke hemiparesis (PSH) is relatively scarce. The objective of this study was to review the neurological outcomes after spinal cord stimulation (SCS) for PSH from a consecutive, single-institute, published series.
Materials And Methods:
We retrospectively reviewed a database of 10 patients diagnosed with PSH who underwent treatment with SCS at our single center between November 2023 and October 2025. The neurological evaluation included upper-extremity/lower-extremity modified Ashworth scale (MAS-UE/LE), UE/LE Fugl-Meyer assessment (FMA-UE/LE), Brunnstrom, Berg Balance Scale (BBS), and modified Barthel index (MBI) scores before treatment and during follow-up. The references of the publications meeting the inclusion criteria were checked again for eligibility using PubMed and Embase. A paired t-test was used to compare changes in neurological outcomes before and after treatment.
Results:
A total of 10 PSH patients (90.0%, 9 males and 10.0%, 1 female) were eligible for inclusion in the analysis, with a mean age at the time of the SCS treatment of 50.9 ± 3.8 years (range 34.0-69.0 years). The mean MAS-UE, MAS-LE, FMA-UE, FMA-LE, Brunnstrom, BBS, and MBI scores were 3.0 ± 0.9, 2.8 ± 0.7, 13.4 ± 9.3, 9.9 ± 6.5, 3.1 ± 0.7, 39.5 ± 15.2, and 85.3 ± 32.8, respectively, at admission and 2.2 ± 1.0 (95% CI=0.5-1.1; p < 0.001), 2.0 ± 0.8 (95% CI=0.5 -1.1; p < 0.001), 23.4 ± 9.8 (95% CI = -13.6--6.4 ; p < 0.001), 14.4 ± 7.3 (95% CI=-6.4--2.7; p = 0.001), 4.1 ± 0.7 (95% CI=-1.3--0.7; p < 0.001), 42.9 ± 15.6 (95% CI=-6.0--0.8; p = 0.016), and 87.5 ± 33.1 (95% CI = -3.8 --0.6; p = 0.013), respectively, at 3 months of follow-up. Six published reports with 32 patients were included in this study, and no significant differences were found in baseline characteristics between our cohort and published studies.
Conclusion:
The use of SCS to treat patients with PSH results in improved function with acceptable long-term feasibility.