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Ankle-foot orthoses (AFOs) are commonly prescribed to provide ankle support during walking. Current prescription standards provide general guidelines for choosing between AFO types, but are limited in terms of guiding specific design parameter choices. These design parameters affect the ankle stiffness of the AFO.

The aim of this review was to investigate the impact of AFO stiffness on walking mechanics.

A literature search was conducted using three databases: Pubmed, Engineering Village, and Web of Science.

After applying the exclusion criteria, 25 of 287 potential articles were included. The included papers tested a range of stiffnesses (0.02–8.17 Nm/deg), a variety of populations (e.g. healthy, post-stroke, cerebral palsy) and various gait outcome measures. Ankle kinematics were the most frequently reported measures and the most consistently affected by …