Measuring Walking and Balance in Spinal Cord Injury

This chapter aims to describe and evaluate the assessment tools used for evaluating walking and balance in people with SCI through a systematic review of scientific literature. The systematic review was conducted in line with COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement Instruments (COSMIN) on PubMed, Scopus, CINAHL, and Web of Science. After removing duplicates, 3333 papers were screened. Of these, 476 were included in this systematic review. Among these, 47 papers were considered for this chapter. Results show 38 assessment tools that evaluate the walking and balance area in persons with SCI. Among these, most scales evaluate the aspect of assistance and distance and are mainly performance tests. The most common assessment tools are the Walking Index for Spinal Cord Injury (WISCI), which is a functional capacity scale to measure improvements in ambulation evaluating the amount of physical assistance, braces, or devices required to walk at 10 m; the 6-min Walking Test (6MWT), which is a measure of distance and represents the maximum distance walked in 6 min; the Neuromuscular Recovery Scale (NRS), which is an 11-item scale that compares sitting, standing, walking, and transfers relative to typical performance; and, the Berg Balance Scale (BBS), which consists of a test that lasts 15–20 min and includes a series of 14 simple tasks related to balance that ranges from getting up from a sitting position to standing on one foot.