| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 醫學工程研究所碩博士班 === 93 === CVA (Cerebral vascular accident, stroke) is a common disease with the increasing of average life span in advanced age society like Taiwan. Therefore, take care of hemiplegia surviving fortunately after stroke is gradually essential. As we know, wheelchair offers the greatest mobility and stability for hemiplegia who needs mobility aids to locomotion. However,traditional wheelchair was designed for patient with normal upper limbs. The asymmetrical propel manner will be strait and dangerous for hemiplegia who only has single unaffected side.
In this study, we design and develop a unilateral knee joint operated wheelchair for hemiplegia and evaluate it by field and cardiopulmonary exercise test. Fifteen hemiplegia patients are recruited to participate in the test. They are asked to propel three kinds of unilateral-operated wheelchair including new type wheelchair designed by us, and the tendency of the result is compared with another fifteen health volunteers’.
The results demonstrate significantly that subjects spend less time to finish all test processes using new type wheelchair, and make fewer numbers to deviate out from the confined area in field test. In cardiopulmonary exercise test, subjects also need less time, and less.oxygen consumption (VO2max) to finish test by new type wheelchair. Furthermore, the average velocity, physiological cost index (PCI) and rating perceived exertion (RPE) also show that the new type wheelchair is much easier to be operated. Therefore, especially for hemiplegia, the new type wheelchair is not only safe but also more efficient and easy operated than other types.
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