Walking through an aperture while penetrating from the paretic side improves safety managing the paretic side for individuals with stroke who had previous falls.

Background: Safety management of the paretic side of the body is critical for individuals with stroke. We previously reported that individuals with stroke who walk through an aperture while penetrating from the paretic side had fewer collisions with the frame of an aperture than did those penetrating from the non-paretic side. We observed spontaneous behavior of collision avoidance in our previous study; this study thus used penetration from the paretic and non-paretic sides as independent variables to confirm the usefulness of penetrating from the paretic side.