Rehabilitation of the lower extremities, standing and walking function in people with spinal cord injury or disease: Guideline of the German-Speaking Medical Society for Spinal Cord Injury
DMGP · 2025 · Germany
Source and licence
- Authors
- Sophie Irrgang, Sandra Himmelhaus, Kirstin Allek et al.
- Title
- Rehabilitation of the lower extremities, standing and walking function in people with spinal cord injury or disease: Guideline of the German-Speaking Medical Society for Spinal Cord Injury
- Journal
- GMS German Medical Science, 2025
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Changes
- Verbatim excerpts; formatting adapted
Full text retrieved 2026-10-27 from Europe PMC · PMC12247552
Licence statement of the original publication
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. See license information at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
This page reproduces excerpts of the original publication; the original is authoritative. It has not been reviewed by a physician, does not state a recommendation of Medelix and does not replace medical advice. The guideline may have been updated since.
Open the original publication →Full text on Europe PMC
Recommendations
We found no explicitly labelled recommendations in this publication; its recommendations are in the running text of the original.
Abstract
Introduction: According of the level and severity of the spinal cord injury or disease (SCI/D), and the impairment of motor, sensory, and autonomic functions, individuals with SCI/D recover some standing and walking capabilities. To increase quality of rehabilitation and use newest evidence, the clinical practice guideline (CPG) “S2e-Guideline Rehabilitation of lower extremities, standing and walking function in people with SCI/D” of the German speaking Medical Association for Paraplegiology (DMGP) was updated.
Methods: Following a multi-tiered approach systematic searches were conducted to identify appropriate literature. For this purpose, the Databases PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library and PEDro were searched. Recommendations on assessments were grouped to the categories “activity and participation” or “body functions/body structures”. Recommendations on interventions were labeled with outcomes standing, walking, strength, range of motion, pain and muscle tonus.
Results: In total, 9,871 studies were identified during the search. Of these, four systematic reviews and eleven primary studies were utilized in composing the recommendations. A total of 25 recommendations were made, with 20 derived from the literature and 5 based on expert consensus. In total 14 functional assessments and 11 rehabilitation interventions became compiled. The assembled recommendations regarding assessments could be well built on published literature, while overall there is a paucity of literature proofing the evidence of specific interventions used in clinical practice. Therefore, the expertise of the international expert group and input from patient representatives were pivotal.
Conclusion: The method of an evidence-based guideline was sufficient for the recommendation of functional assessments but showed the need scientific clarification in the field of clinically established interventions.
Contents of the original publication
The section headings of the original.
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Methods
- 2.1 Literature search
- 2.2 Eligibility criteria
- 2.3 Selection process
- 2.4 Analysis of study quality
- 2.5 Data collection and synthesis of results
- 2.6 Formulation of recommendations
- 2.7 Participation of patients
- 3 Results
- 3.1 Study selection
- 3.2 Assessments
- 3.3 Interventions
- 3.4 Outcomes
- 4 Discussion
- 5 Conclusion
- Notes
- Guideline
- Shared first authorship
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