Early Prone Positioning As a Rescue Therapy for Moderate-to-severe Primary Graft Dysfunction After Bilateral Lung Transplant.

Objectives: Primary graft dysfunction (PGD) affects survival after lung transplant (LT). The current hypothesis was that prone positioning (PP), proposed as a rescue maneuver to treat refractory hypoxemia due to PGD, may improve LT outcomes, especially when applied early.

Design: Bilateral LT recipients developing moderate-to-severe PGD within 24 hours from intensive care unit admission were enrolled.

Sensor-Based Quantitative Assessment of Children's Fine Motor Competence: An Instrumented Version of the Placing Bricks Test.

The assessment of fine motor competence plays a pivotal role in neuropsychological examinations for the identification of developmental deficits. Several tests have been proposed for the characterization of fine motor competence, with evaluation metrics primarily based on qualitative observation, limiting quantitative assessment to measures such as test durations. The Placing Bricks (PB) test evaluates fine motor competence across the lifespan, relying on the measurement of time to completion.

The effects of an active breaks intervention on physical and cognitive performance: results from the I-MOVE study.

Background: The present quasi-experimental study aimed to evaluate the effects of active breaks intervention (ABs) to promote physical and cognitive improvement in primary school.

Methods: The active breaks group (ABsG) performed 10 min of ABs three times per school day and the control group (CG) did normal lessons. The baseline and follow-up evaluation was conducted respectively in October 2019 and in May 2021.

Modulations of Cortical Power and Connectivity in Alpha and Beta Bands during the Preparation of Reaching Movements.

Planning goal-directed movements towards different targets is at the basis of common daily activities (e.g., reaching), involving visual, visuomotor, and sensorimotor brain areas.

Gait performance in toddlers born preterm: A sensor based quantitative characterization.

Background And Objectives: Preterm children have an increased risk of motor difficulties. Gait analysis and wearable technologies allow the assessment of motor performance in toddlers, identifying early deviations from typical development. Using a sensor-based approach, gait performance of full-term and preterm toddlers at different risk of motor delay was analysed.

Quantitative Characterization of Motor Control during Gait in Dravet Syndrome Using Wearable Sensors: A Preliminary Study.

Dravet syndrome (DS) is a rare and severe form of genetic epilepsy characterized by cognitive and behavioural impairments and progressive gait deterioration. The characterization of gait parameters in DS needs efficient, non-invasive quantification. The aim of the present study is to apply nonlinear indexes calculated from inertial measurements to describe the dynamics of DS gait.

The impact of COVID-19 on physical activity behaviour in Italian primary school children: a comparison before and during pandemic considering gender differences.

Background: The World Health Organization stated an average of 60 min of Moderate to Vigorous Physical Activity (MVPA) that children should accumulate every day. Nevertheless physical inactivity is growing and, due to restrictions imposed during pandemic, PA levels of children might be more negatively affected. The study aimed to analyse the impact of COVID-19 on the PA of an Italian sample of primary school children by comparing it before and during COVID-19 considering gender differences.

Quantitative characterization of walking on sand inecological conditions: Speed, temporal segmentation, and variability.

Background: Walking on compliant surfaces, on sand in particular, is now recommended for training in both elderlies and injured subjects/individuals, allowing to perform high intensity exercises (i.e. augmented energy expenditure) in safe conditions (i.

Technology-based methods for the assessment of fine and gross motor skill in children: A systematic overview of available solutions and future steps for effective in-field use.

The present review aims at providing researchers and practitioners with a holistic overview of technology-based methods for the assessment of fine and gross motor skill in children. We conducted a search of electronic databases using Web of Science, PubMed and Google Scholar, including studies published up to March 2020, that assessed fine and/or gross motor skills, and utilized technological assessment of varying study design. A total of 739 papers were initially retrieved, and after title/abstract screening, removal of duplicates, and full-text screening, 47 were included.

Human motor control: Is a subject-specific quantitative assessment of its multiple characteristics possible? A demonstrative application on children motor development.

In synergy with the musculoskeletal system, motor control is responsible of motor performance, determining joint kinematics and kinetics as related to task and environmental constraints. Multiple metrics have been proposed to quantify motor control from kinematic measures of motion, each index quantifying a different specific aspect, but the characterization of motor control as related to a specific subject or population during the execution of a specific task is still missing. In the present work, the performance of a novel approach for quantitative parametrization of motor control is tested over 86 primary school children: 36 I grade, 50 II grade; 40 females, 46 males.

A Multiple Targeted Research Protocol for a Quasi-Experimental Trial in Primary School Children Based on an Active Break Intervention: The Imola Active Breaks (I-MOVE) Study.

Background: Children and adolescents should perform, according to the World Health Organization guidelines, at least 60 min of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per-day in order to avoid the risk of metabolic and cardiovascular diseases. The school represents a fundamental setting to conduct interventions to promote physical activity (PA) and contrast sedentary behaviors. Active breaks (ABs), bouts of 10 min of PA conducted inside the classroom, seem to be a good strategy to promote PA and improve classroom behavior.

Timing estimation for gait in water from inertial sensor measurements: Analysis of the performance of 17 algorithms.

Background And Objectives: Walking in water is used for rehabilitation in different pathological conditions. For the characterization of gait alterations related to pathology, gait timing assessment is of primary importance. With the widespread use of inertial sensors, several algorithms have been proposed for gait timing estimation (i.

Analysis of the performance of 17 algorithms from a systematic review: Influence of sensor position, analysed variable and computational approach in gait timing estimation from IMU measurements.

Background: The quantification of gait temporal parameters (i.e. step time, stance time) is crucial in human motion analysis and requires the accurate identification of gait events (i.

Nonlinear Analysis of Human Movement Dynamics Offers New Insights in the Development of Motor Control During Childhood.

When aiming at assessing motor control development, natural walking (NW), and tandem walking (TW) are two locomotor tasks that allow analyzing different characteristics of motor control performance. NW is the reference locomotor task, expected to become more and more automatic with age. TW is a nonparadigmatic task used in clinics to highlight eventual impairments and to evaluate how a child deals with a new challenging motor experience.

Local dynamic stability during gait for predicting falls in elderly people: A one-year prospective study.

Computing the local dynamic stability using accelerometer data from inertial sensors has recently been proposed as a gait measure which may be able to identify elderly people at fall risk. However, the assumptions supporting this potential were concluded as most studies implement a retrospective fall history observation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the potential of local dynamic stability for fall risk prediction in a cohort of subjects over the age of 60 years using a prospective fall occurrence observation.

Moving from laboratory to real life conditions: Influence on the assessment of variability and stability of gait.

The availability of wearable sensors allows shifting gait analysis from the traditional laboratory settings, to daily life conditions. However, limited knowledge is available about whether alterations associated to different testing environment (e.g.

Changes in tibialis anterior architecture affect the amplitude of surface electromyograms.

Background: Variations in the amplitude of surface electromyograms (EMGs) are typically considered to advance inferences on the timing and degree of muscle activation in different circumstances. Surface EMGs are however affected by factors other than the muscle neural drive. In this study, we use electrical stimulation to investigate whether architectural changes in tibialis anterior (TA), a key muscle for balance and gait, affect the amplitude of surface EMGs.

Objective assessment of movement competence in children using wearable sensors: An instrumented version of the TGMD-2 locomotor subtest.

Movement competence (MC) is defined as the development of sufficient skill to assure successful performance in different physical activities. Monitoring children MC during maturation is fundamental to detect early minor delays and define effective intervention. To this purpose, several MC assessment batteries are available.

Development of gait motor control: what happens after a sudden increase in height during adolescence?

Background: Basic understanding of motor control and its processes is a topic of well-known high relevance. During adolescence walking is theoretically a well-achieved fundamental skill, having reached a mature manifestation; on the other hand, adolescence is marked by a period of accelerated increases in both height and weight, referred as growth spurt. Thus, this period was chosen as a controlled and natural environment for partially isolating one of the factors influencing motor development (segment growth).

Anatomical calibration for wearable motion capture systems: Video calibrated anatomical system technique.

Inertial sensors are becoming widely used for the assessment of human movement in both clinical and research applications, thanks to their usability out of the laboratory. This work aims to propose a method for calibrating anatomical landmark position in the wearable sensor reference frame with an ease to use, portable and low cost device. An off-the-shelf camera, a stick and a pattern, attached to the inertial sensor, compose the device.

Measures of gait stability: performance on adults and toddlers at the beginning of independent walking.

Background: Quantifying gait stability is a topic of high relevance and a number of possible measures have been proposed. The problem in validating these methods is the necessity to identify a-priori unstable individuals. Since proposed methods do not make any assumption on the characteristics of the subjects, the aim of the present study was to test the performance of gait stability measures on individuals whose gait is a-priori assumed unstable: toddlers at the onset of independent walking.

Influence of input parameters on dynamic orbital stability of walking: in-silico and experimental evaluation.

Many measures aiming to assess the stability of human motion have been proposed in the literature, but still there is no commonly accepted way to define or quantify locomotor stability. Among these measures, orbital stability analysis via Floquet multipliers is still under debate. Some of the controversies concerning the use of this technique could lie in the absence of a standard implementation.

Biomechanical and metabolic responses to seat-tube angle variation during cycling in tri-athletes.

One of the most physically demanding parts of triathlon is the transition from cycling to running. Many tri-athletes believe that increasing seat-tube angle (STA) can bring advantages in the following running part. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of inverting the support of the seat, for increasing STA, on the metabolic response and on the muscle activation pattern, maintaining a controlled kinematic.

An EMG-driven model applied for predicting metabolic energy consumption during movement.

The relationship between mechanical work and metabolic energy cost during movement is not yet clear. Many studies demonstrated the utility of forward-dynamic musculoskeletal models combined with experimental data to address such question. The aim of this study was to evaluate the applicability of a muscle energy expenditure model at whole body level, using an EMG-driven approach.