Augmented upper body contribution to oxygen uptake during upper body exercise with concurrent leg functional electrical stimulation in persons with spinal cord injury.

The purpose of this pilot study was to compare the contribution of upper body musculature to VO2 with and without concurrent leg FES (LFES). Eight subjects with spinal cord injury, lesion levels range C6-T12, performed upper body exercise (UBE) during no LFES (NOS), LFES at 40 mA (LOS), and 80 mA (HIS), at rest, 60% and 80% of VO2peak. Resting VO2 values were obtained during NOS, LOS and HIS conditions and were then subtracted from their respective whole body VO2 values to give an estimate of upper body VO2. Small and non significant increases were found in the HIS vs NOS condition at 60% VO2peak. Larger differences of 7.8% were found in the HIS vs NOS condition at 80% VO2peak (11.35+/-3.8 ml kg(-1) min(-1) to 12.24+/-4.0 ml kg(-1) min(-1)), although this too was not significant, perhaps due to the small number of subjects in this study and the consequently low statistical power to detect a significant difference. We discuss the implications for these preliminary results in the context of the existing literature on this topic.