Introduction: Spinal cord injury is usually a devastating state of disability associated with permanent loss of motor-sensory autonomic function and a high mortality rate. The worldwide incidence for spinal cord injury is between 40 and 80 new cases per million people per year. Spinal cord injury causes a pathological gait pattern due to paresis, spasticity, and sensory dysfunction of the lower limbs. A successful cure for spinal cord injury has not yet been discovered, so rehabilitation is the main approach to achieve independent walking for patients. Conventional rehabilitation for spinal cord injuries requires a lot of intense physical work by therapists, as they have to manually initiate the patient's repetitive movements (e.g., leg movements during walking). Rehabilitation exoskeletons can accurately reproduce these repetitive movements and relieve therapists from much of the physical work. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to review the professional and scientific literature, to represent the orthotic care for patients with spinal cord injuries, review exoskeletons available on the market, and determine the effectiveness of exoskeleton use. Methods: For the purposes of this thesis professional and scientific literature and patents were reviewed in the period between 24. and 27. 11. 2020, using PubMed, ScienceDirect, and Google Patents databases to find scientific literature and patents. The keywords used to search for articles and patents were: "spinal cord injury AND rehabilitation AND exoskeleton". Results: This thesis studies the content of 9 scientific articles in which the authors described the effects of using exoskeletons. They concluded that exoskeletons are effective rehabilitation tools that can improve functional test results and have positive effects on the patient's emotional state. In addition, exoskeletons could help reduce secondary health problems and improve overall quality of life. Discussion and conclusion: Lower limb exoskeletons are assistive devices for ehabilitation and ambulatory use for individuals with spinal cord injuries. They allow people with lower limb motor dysfunction to sit, stand, and walk safely and independently. However, the results in the reviewed scientific articles are based on a small number of subjects and short-term studies (sessions up to 12 weeks). In addition, the studies are not standardized, making comparison difficult, and the results derived are inconsistent due to the diversity of subjects and their environments. More research is needed to determine long-term effects.
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