Spasticity is a common pathology after brain lesions consisting in an incorrect synergic contraction of agonist-antagonist muscles. Nowadays, there are more treatments, yet recently a new therapy was ...introduced: the injections of botulinum toxin in the spastic muscles. This work is a pilot study aiming to analyse quantitatively these co-activations before and after the treatment. Data were acquired performing gait analysis in the laboratory of Salerno's hospital. Spatial temporal parameters, kinematic information and electromyography signals were obtained. Two patients were analysed and a Matlab application was implemented to calculate a co-activation index and the time of co-activation of some muscular couples. The comparison between the results before and after the treatment describes a positive prognosis with improvements in spatial temporal parameters and kinematic for both patients. Both the co-activation index and the times of co-activations decreased after the treatment. This pilot study shows that patients treated with BTX have a positive prognosis with a quantitative improving.
Foetal heart rate variability is considered an important parameter, capable to highlight foetal reactivity and wellbeing. Many studies focused their attention on foetal heart rate variability ...analysis, using different techniques both in time and frequency domain. Proposed parameters have shown some limitations, due to their inability to analyze nonlinear dynamics, involved in heart rate control and relevant for clinical aims. In the last decades, nonlinear analysis methods have gained a growing interest. Here, we described an application of a nonlinear analysis (symbolic dynamic analysis) and introduced a new index to quantify foetal heart rate variability, in a simple and concise way, in healthy foetuses near to term. The index was able to highlight differences in foetal heart rate variability, not always so evident on printed cardiotocographic signals, and resulted significantly correlated with the different kinds of delivery (spontaneous or caesarean); in particular, higher variability index values corresponded to spontaneous delivery.
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