Wheelchair Propulsion
People with a spinal cord injury (SCI) often rely upon manual wheelchair propulsion as their primary means of independent mobility. However, it has been reported that between 25% and 80% of people who use manual wheelchairs experience wrist, elbow and shoulder injuries often due to overuse and/or poor propulsion ergonomics (Cooper et al. 2001; Boninger et al. 1999). The articles in this section focus on the kinetic (forces, mechanical loads, moments (torque)) and kinematics (movement at joints or between body segments) during propulsion, the effects of propulsion on the body and the effect of the environment on propulsion.
Most articles refer to wheelchair propulsion in two phases, push or propulsion phase and recovery phase. The push phase starts when the hand contacts the hand rim and ends when contact with hand rim ends. The recovery phase is the time period where the hands are not in contact with the hand rim, typically moving to prepare for the next push cycle (Ambrosia et al. 2005; VanLandewijick et al. 1994).
The stroke pattern in wheelchair propulsion subsection is presented first as the pattern types are often referred to in subsequent sections. It is also worth noting that for many studies in this section, data was collected on various surfaces, often in a lab setting. In the lab settings, researchers used stationary treadmills, ergonometers, and/or dynamometers. There is some discussion within several articles related to the pros and cons of using one of these devices over the others. This discussion was felt by the chapter authors to be a research-based issue and was beyond the scope of this clinical-based document therefore the article content related to this specific topic was not reviewed or included in the tables below.
The second and third subsections focus more specifically on kinetics and kinematics. Due to the large volume of research in this area the articles were separated roughly into level surfaces and non-level surfaces. The non-level surfaces include surfaces such as side slopes, uneven surfaces, wheelies, curbs and inclines.
