The purpose of this study was to verify, by a systematic literature review, the effect of resisted exercise applied to the inferior limbs spastic muscles in relationship to muscular force, spasticity and functionality of hemiparetic subjects. A literature review of the Medline, LILACS, SciELO, PEDro, PubMed and EBSCO databases was performed. The following terms were used (MeSH key words): stroke, physical therapy modalities, muscle spasticity, muscle strength, muscle stretching exercises, rehabilitation, and its correspondents in the Portuguese language. A total of 961 references were located. Fourteen studies followed the inclusion criteria. Of these, 78.6% had been evaluated for muscle strength, and 91% of this group had increased significantly; 42.9% had been evaluated for spasticity level and none from this category had observed changes in muscular tonus; 85.7% of the studies had evaluated functionality by means of fourteen different instruments. Among these forms of evaluation, eight had been used in more than one study, in which two showed 100% significant improvement, three showed 50% improvement, one presented 66.7% improvement, and another study presented 25% improvement. Resisted exercise can be an important tool in physical therapy treatment since the primary aim is to improve functionality of chronic hemiparetic subjects.

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A brief summary and a critical assessment of this review may be available at DARE