Effectiveness of the Easy-Up Handle in acute rehabilitation

Objective: The ability to attain standing without assistance is important to independent functioning. The objectives of this study, therefore, were to: (1) determine the effectiveness of the Easy-Up Handle for enabling otherwise dependent patients to attain standing from an armless chair and (2) establish whether knee extension force played a role in such effectiveness. Design: Cross-sectional descriptive study and explicatory experiment. Setting: Acute rehabilitation unit. Subjects: A subset (n = 26) of 107 primarily elderly patients described in a previous study. The subjects were selected because of their inability to stand from an armless chair, even when using their upper limbs. Main measures: The ability to stand from the same chair when using an Easy-Up Handle. Hand-held dynamometer measures of the combined strength of the lower extremities. Results: Eight of 26 otherwise dependent patients were able to stand up independently with the Easy-Up Handle. Whether or not they were able to attain standing with the Easy-Up Handle was predicted by their combined knee extension force and by their combined force normalized against body weight. The Pearson correlations between stand-up independence (yes, no) and the forces were 0.496 and 0.543, respectively. Conclusions: The Easy-Up Handle can facilitate independence in chair rise for some patients otherwise unable to stand from sitting. Even with the Easy-Up Handle, however, a threshold of knee extension force is required.