Comparative Analysis of Muscle Synergy between Patients with Shoulder Impingement Syndrome and Healthy Controls: A Preliminary Study.

Shoulder impingement syndrome can be caused by a muscle imbalance around the shoulder joint. It would be beneficial for therapy to implement rehabilitation exercises based on intermuscular coordination in order to achieve muscle balance. This study presents the muscle synergy characteristics of patients with shoulder impingement syndrome, which can be used to develop rehabilitation exercises. During pick and place task, the muscle synergy obtained from eight shoulder muscles in patients and healthy subjects was compared. The experimental results revealed that patients have low contributed muscle synergy structures for the serratus anterior and infraspinatus.Clinical relevance- This proposes that patients with shoulder impingement syndrome may have abnormal muscle synergy structure which can be used for assessment.