The use of robotics devices in knee rehabilitation: a critical review

Abstract

Knee surgery is a common procedure to treat cartilage defects, soft tissue lesions as cruciate ligaments (ACL/PCL), and osteoarthritis with total or unicondylar knee arthroplasty. After knee surgery, every patient undergoes a long period of rehabilitation (typically from 6 weeks to 6 months) consisting of long sessions of physiotherapy and medical training therapy carried out by qualified personnel. This procedure is long and expensive, and may cause work-related pathologies to physiotherapists. Fortunately, it is generally agreed that robotics may benefit to both patients and physiotherapists due to its ability to repeat tasks with accuracy and its potential to measure the progress of the rehabilitation. This paper aims at providing a critical review of the different proposed robotic solutions and the associated rehabilitation techniques for the knee in particular and for the lower limb in general, with the sake of highlighting the pros and cons and to identify possible promising directions of research.