Supervisors info:
Σεραφείμ Ν. Νανάς, Καθηγητής, Ιατρική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Βασιλειάδης Ιωάννης, Επίκουρος Καθηγητής, Ιατρική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Αναστάσιος Φιλίππου, Επίκουρος Καθηγητής, Ιατρική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Summary:
Abstract
Introduction: Electromyostimulation (EMS) treatment has been used for the most as a rehabilitation method of musculoskeletal disorders by physiotherapists. It is used not only for healthy, but also sick individuals too. Seemingly, electromyostimulation method is used not only to healthy individuals but also patients. Some of the benefits of the treatment are muscle mass increase, total body fat decrease and overall improvement of movements. EMS has been studied through years either alone as method, or in comparison with others as well. Finally, EMS is considered to be a safe, low-cost and effective rehabilitation method.
Purpose: The main purpose of this systematic review is to gather up all the available information about whole body EMS on people who have some specific chronic illness or condition, so that investigators could be able to evaluate the effectiveness of whole-body EMS.
Methods & tools: There were used mainly three databases for the research, Pubmed, Scopus and Pedro. Afterwards, all the relevant articles had been evaluated by Pedro scale and finally there has been created a results-table based on PICOs methodology.
Results: Overall, 18 articles have been identified as relevant throughout the research. All of them were meet the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Most of the selected articles were high scored (by Pedro scale evaluation), which means that they are high quality on their methodology. Muscle mass increase, body fat decrease, improvement of limb strength and improvement of patients clinical profile are some of the benefits of the treatment. Based on the included interventions it was found that, WB-EMS has a great range of benefits on people with chronic conditions or diseases.
Conclusion: WB-EMS therapy is a quite useful and effective technique, which could be used to improve many chronic diseases and medical issues, such as chronic spinal cord injury, sarcopenic obesity, sarcopenia, chronic pulmonary disease, malignancies and post-menopausal.
Key words: Electromyostimulation, electrical stimuli, EMS, whole body, systematic review
Keywords:
Electromyostimulation, Electrical stimulation, EMS, Whole body, Systematic review
