J Rehabil Med 44 Review ARticle

Objective: equinovarus foot deformity following stroke or traumatic brain injury compromises walking capacity, in-terfering with activities of daily living. in soft-tissue surgery the imbalanced muscles responsible for the deviant position of the ankle and foot are lengthened, released and/or trans-ferred. However, knowledge about the effectiveness of surgi-cal correction is limited. the aim of the present study was to carry out a systematic review of the literature to assess the effects of surgical correction of equinovarus foot deformity in patients with stroke or traumatic brain injury. Methods: A systematic search of full-length articles in the english, German or Dutch languages published from 1965 to March 2011 was performed in PubMed, eMBASe, CINAHL, Cochrane and CIRRIE. The identified studies were analysed following the International Classification o