Ergonomic Evaluation Of An Active Wrist Orthosis For The Treatment Of Muscular Rigidity In Individuals With Parkinson'S Disease

Muscular stiffness is one of the main symptoms of Parkinson's disease. This symptom can manifest in different areas of the body, being more common in the upper limbs, which makes it difficult to perform activities involving the use of hands. This study presents results obtained from the ergonomic evaluation of an active wrist orthosis for the rehabilitation of wrist flexion and extension movements of individuals with Parkinson's disease who have symptoms of muscular rigidity. The study focused on assessing the muscular strength required to initiate wrist flexion and extension in healthy subjects. In order to evaluate this strength, electromyographic signals of each subject were acquired during Maximum Voluntary Contraction while the subjects executed wrist flexion and extension movements with and without the use of the orthosis. The mean of peaks of the maximum envelop of the EMG signals was used as an indicator of the muscular strength. The results suggest that the use of the device does not negatively influence the subject's movement, opening thus, opportunity to further larger scale study involving subjects with Parkinson's disease.