Effectiveness of Cryokinetics on Functional Independence of Participants with Spinal Cord Injury

Adebisi I Hammed¹, Elvis I Agbonlahor², Solomon Ogbouma², Gabriel E Arainru², SM Adodo² and Collins Ogbeivor³*

Received: June 22, 2022;   Published: August 08, 2022

DOI: 10.26717/BJSTR.2022.45.007223

Full Text PDF

To view the Full Article   Peer-reviewed Article PDF

Abstract

This study investigated the effectiveness of cryokinetics on functional independence of participants with spinal cord injury. This study was a pretest – posttest control group experimental design. Thirty-nine participants with spinal cord injury participated inf the study. Participants were randomly assigned into four groups (groups 1, 2, 3 and 4). The 1st group was recognized as the control group while, the 2nd, 3rd and 4th groups were experimental groups. The participants in the control group received conventional daily treatment protocols (usual treatment protocols), the participants in the experimental group 1 received usual treatment protocols plus ST programmes, the participants in the experimental group 2 received usual treatment protocols plus cryotherapy, while the participants in the experimental group 3 received usual treatment protocols plus cryokinetics.

The Quadriplegia Index of Function–Short Form measure (r = 0.987) was used to determine the functional independence of the participants. The adapted cryokinetics protocols were administered to improve the functional independence of the participants. The functional independence of the participants was measured before and after the eight (8) weeks of cryokinetics respectively. One-way analysis of variance was used to analyze the differences in the functional independence of participants with spinal cord injury treated cryokinetics and usual care, compared with the other groups. The finding of this study demonstrated that the cryokinetics in combination with standard care had statistically significant effects on the functional independence of participants with spinal cord injury (p<0.05) in comparison with the other groups. It was concluded that the cryokinetics when combined with standard care can substantially improve the functional independence of spinal cord injury patients. We therefore, recommend that cryokinetics combined with standard treatment protocol should be the treatment of choice for patients with spinal cord injury.

Keywords: Cryokinetics; Functionality; Spinal Cord Injury