Rectus femoris characteristics in post stroke spasticity: Clinical implications from ultrasonographic evaluation

In stroke survivors, rectus femoris (RF) spasticity is often implicated in gait pattern alterations such as stiff knee gait (SKG). Botulinum toxin type A (BoNT-A) is considered the gold standard for focal spasticity treatment. However - even if the accuracy of injection is crucial for BoNT-A efficacy - instrumented guidance for BoNT-A injection is not routinely applied in clinical settings. In order to investigate the possible implications of an inadequate BoNT-A injection on patients' clinical outcome, we evaluated the ultrasound-derived RF characteristics (muscle depth, muscle thickness, cross-sectional area and mean echo intensity) in 47 stroke survivors. In our sample, we observed wide variability of RF depth in both hemiparetic and unaffected side of included patients (0.44 and 3.54 cm and between 0.25 and 3.16 cm, respectively). Moreover, our analysis did not show significant differences between treated and non-treated RF in stroke survivors. These results suggest that considering the inter-individual variability in RF muscle depth and thickness, injection guidance should be considered for BoNT-A treatment in order to optimize the clinical outcome of treated patients. In particular, ultrasound guidance may help the clinicians in the long-term follow-up of muscle quality.