Last update 2011-10-26
Hello, you are welcome on my personal web page.
I am Vito, I am from Matera (www.sassiweb.it), a beautiful city in the south of Italy, where sun, wholesome food and music influenced my spirit.
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If you want to know more about me, please have a look at this webpage:
http://www-arts.sssup.it/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Vito%20Monaco
Following I briefly show my dissertation at IMT. I hope you will be interested in it.
Have a good day
Vito
Title
Ageing and related disorders on lower limb performance: functional analysis and new rehabilitation robotic platform.
Abstract
This dissertation is focused on the analysis of ageing in daily motor tasks, in particular upright stance and walking. Moreover it introduces a new robotic platform aimed at providing gait rehabilitation in post-stroke patients, during the acute phase.
Posturography, that is the analysis of the upright stance by using clinical tools as Force Platform, has been used to provide outcomes concerning the balance control in elderly with total hip and knee arthroplasty. A long experimental section accounting 59 healthy elderly subjects, 82 patients with total hip arthroplasty and 108 patients with total knee arthroplasty has been carried out. Patients' performance have been evaluated before, 6 and 12 months after the surgical operation and have been compared with healthy subjects to find posturographic parameters sensitive to the impairment. Results showed that a set of parameters time and frequency related, can provide information according to the Evidence Based Medicine, concerning the impairment as well as the follow up of the patients. Concluding, posturography can be considered an useful tool, helping the clinicians in describe the follow up of patients with total hip and knee arthroplasty.
Concerning the measurement chain, drift in force platform have been analysed because it can strongly affect measurements. Bias related to the time window and the weight of the subjects were found. Therefore, easy methods, useful in clinical field, to evaluate and compensate drift have been proposed.
Walking in elderly people is different than in the young ones. Nevertheless, impairments due to the ageing do not fully explain the different performance between young and elderly people. In this dissertation, the interdependence between velocity and ageing has been addressed analysing kinetic and kinematic pattern of young and elderly people walking at five speeds. Results showed that neuromuscular adaptation, consisting in the exchange of the roles between distal and proximal extensor muscles, could be the main reason leading to the different performance.
This conclusion has been also confirmed by analysing the decomposition of the leg muscle activations during locomotion. In particular, conversely than the young people, the synergies undergoing the most important strategies adopted by seniors were orderly related to hip extensors and ankle plantar flexor.
Finally, a new robotic platform providing
gait rehabilitation in post-stroke patients has been designed and
developed. The first results concerning its mechanical development
overcome the limits of the commercial
devices.