Help! URGENT for tomorrow about a physical therapy device?

Question

Collegues or medical people let me knoew about ISOKINETIC device enoug for 1 page......

Coz i can't find any good website or info definition,indications, contraindications, parmeters, & anything useful!

If you help me, I promise you to choose your answer as a BEST ANSWER:)

e.g BIODEX

Answer 1

You can find more at the web site cited, but here is a definition (from that site) that may help:

"Isokinetic exercise utilizes machines that control the speed of contraction within the range of motion. Isokinetic exercise attempts to combine the best features of both isometrics and weight training. It provides muscular overload at a constant preset speed while a muscle mobilizes its force through the full range of motion. For example, an isokinetic stationary bicycle set at 90 revolutions per minute means that despite how hard and fast the exerciser works, the isokinetic properties of the bicycle will allow the exerciser to pedal only as fast as 90 revolutions per minute. Machines known as Cybex and Biodex provide isokinetic results; they generally are used by physical therapists."

Also, try pointing your search engine at "isokinetic therapy" and "isokinetic exercise".

Physical therapy is a broad field with many different practitioners and methods of therapy. It appears that isokinetic therapy attempts to exercise muscles at a constant (iso) level of dynamic motion (kinetic). So, in the bicycle example given, the patient would be instructed to pedal against a certain resistance (friction, electrical, wind, etc.) until a certain "speed" was reached and then maintain that speed. Any attempt to pedal faster would result in increasing resistance to restore the speed to the desired level. As the patient tires, presumably the resistance would be decreased to allow the same "speed" to be maintained. Thus the muscles (in this case mainly the thigh and calf muscles) would be forced to extend and contract at a certain fixed rate against a load.

Compare this to lifting a fixed weight versus straining to move an immovable object. In both of those cases the muscles contract, but lifting a weight also involves motion while the second one does not. So, isokinetic exercise attempts to combine the two.

Answer 2

Isokinetic exercise

This form of exercise is in contrast to the other forms in that it permits maximum muscle contraction throughout the full range of joint movement. You will often seen it referred to as ‘accommodating resistance exercise’ (a term first introduced by Hislop and Perrine, 1967). The resistance is now variable in proportion to the change in muscular capability at every point in the range of motion. The variation is controlled so that at all times it equals the product of the muscular strength.

There are two major types of machine available to offer isokinetic exercise.

Type 1 - an active dynamometer (the most familiar to clinicians) In this type of exercise the speed is controlled whilst resistance is variable according to the amount of force throughout the range of movement. No matter how much force the individual applies the speed does not change. Thus the motion of the body segment is kept at a predetermined velocity.

Type 2 - utilizes a change in the moment arm of the selected resistance to coincide with the change in moment arm of the muscle effort and the change in tension due to muscle length change. The resistance thus accommodates the continuous changes in muscle force which occur throughout the range of movement.

The changes in the resistance arm on the machine are determined and pre-set to coincide with the average strength curves for various joint actions (obviously this involves a different machine for each movement).

Some of the advantages are:
Maximal loading throughout whole range of motion.
Objective, reproducible and easily quantifiable.
Muscles easily isolated.
Safest form of exercise.
Few contraindications.

Some of the disadvantages are:
Time consuming.
Requires a lot of training and skill to use.
Costly.
Not functional.