| To systematically evaluate the effect of five different rehabilitation therapies-functional
electrical stimulation, electromyographic biofeedback, ankle-foot orthosis, Kinesiotex and repetitive transcranial
magnetic stimulation-on lower limb motor function in patients with post-stroke foot drop. Methods: A
computerized search was conducted in EMbase, Web of Science, The Cochrane Library, CBM, PubMed, CNKI,
WanFang Data and VIP databases for randomized controlled trials treating post-stroke foot drop with the five
rehabilitation therapies, from inception to July 2022. Two researchers independently screened literature, extracted
data, and assessed the risk of bias in the included studies. Network Meta-analysis was performed using STATA and
ADDIS software. Results: A total of 40 randomized controlled trials involving 2749 patients were included.
Meta-analysis results indicated that in terms of movement, balance and daily living ability, functional electrical
stimulation, ankle-foot orthosis and electromyographic biofeedback were superior to conventional rehabilitation,
and ankle-foot orthosis was the best. Conclusion: Ankle-foot orthosis have more advantages than the other four
therapies in improving lower limb motor function, balance and daily living ability in stroke patients with foot drop.
However, due to the limitations of the quantity and quality of the included literatures, the conclusions need to be
further verified by more high-quality studies. |