Feasibility of exergaming for upper extremity rehabilitation in people with multiple sclerosis: prospective clinical trial.

Background: Exergaming has been suggested as a rehabilitation method since it is more motivational for people with multiple sclerosis (MS, pwMS). However, the major disadvantage of this method is the lack of specific scenarios designed for pwMS.

Objectives: This study aims to assess the feasibility of exergaming, which was developed for pwMS.

Methods: This unblinded prospective clinical trial was performed in the outpatient MS Clinic of Dokuz Eylül University Hospital. Exergaming scenarios were developed in collaboration with medical personnel consisting of physiotherapists and doctors, and computer engineers. A total of 30 participants who had definite MS diagnoses were included. The exergaming scenarios were implemented using the Microsoft Kinect. A physiotherapist applied custom-made exergames for one session. All the participants were assessed immediately after the session. The User Satisfaction Evaluation Questionnaire was used to assess the user's satisfaction with the system and exergaming.

Results: The mean age was 41.5, the mean Expanded Disability Status Scale was 4.5 (range between 0 and 7), and the mean disease duration was 10.0 years. Twenty patients were relapsing-remitting, and 10 were secondary-progressive. The mean scores of the User Satisfaction Evaluation Questionnaire were 4.33 (SD = 0.84) for helpfulness for rehabilitation, 1.63 (SD = 1.1) for not disturbing, 4.50 (SD = 1.07) for understandability, 4.0 (SD = 0.91) for easiness to control, and 4.33 (SD = 0.84) for enjoyability.

Conclusion: These results showed that our custom-made exergaming scenario could be feasible in upper extremity rehabilitation in MS. More research is needed to investigate its effectiveness in the rehabilitation of upper limbs.