The Impact of Sports Training on the Spinal Cord Injury Individual's Balance

Abstract

Spinal cord injury (SCI) causes major challenges to mobility and daily life activities and maintaining balance becomes a crucial issue. Individuals with SCI often need to adopt new strategies to manage balance with minimal discomfort. Sports and physical activities have become one of the most popular rehabilitation methods for people with SCI. The assessment of balance improvement currently relies on subjective evaluation scales, and this study aims to quantitively assess the efficacy of sports on the balance strategies of people with SCI. Twenty-two SCI people remained seated still for 30 s, with their eyes open and closed, and we recorded trunk kinematics with an optoelectronic system before and after a three-months sports program. We also computed trunk total sway length, mean velocity, and sway density curve. Statistical analyses were performed to compare SCI people before and after the rehabilitation program and to investigate any correlations between the trunk balance parameters and the clinical scales. The results demonstrate improvements in static balance, with significant reductions in sway length and mean velocity. In conclusion, our findings confirm the potential of sports to enhance balance in SCI individuals and suggest that integrating structured sports programs into rehabilitation can improve stability and postural control.

Keywords: balance; kinematic analysis; optoelectronic system; spinal cord injury; sport rehabilitation; sway density curve; sway length; wheelchair sports.

Figure 1

On the left: a drawing showing how the center of upper body (CUB) is constructed. On the right: example of sway path in the four conditions considered. (a) Time T0 eyes open; (b) Time T1 eyes open; (c) Time T0 eyes closed; (d) Time T1 eyes closed.

Figure 2

A graphical definition of the three parameters extracted from the sway density curve. On the left, the mean spatial distance of peaks (MD) on the sway path; on the right, the mean time interval (MT) and the mean value of the peak (MP).

Figure 3

Mean and standard deviation values of the total sway length, mean velocity and mean distance, mean peak and mean time of the sway density curve’s peaks indices in the conditions analyzed before (T0) and after (T1) sport rehabilitation program with both eyes open (OE) and closed (CE). Data are represented as bar plots with error bars indicating variability. Metrics are given in units of millimeters [mm] and seconds [s]. * Level of significance 95% when p < 0.05.

Figure 4

Pearson correlation coefficients and their corresponding p-values at two different time points (T0 at left and T1 at right) for the index in relation to demographic data and clinical measures in both conditions (OE and CE). Bold p-values less than 0.05 indicate statistically significant correlations. Blue shades indicate positive correlations, red shades indicate negative correlations, and the intensity of the color represents the correlation’s strength.