Study design
cyclic leg movements, RTT
We conducted a three-arms randomized controlled trial of 47 subacute DoC patients in the inpatient early neurorehabilitation setting of a rehabilitation hospital in the southern German state of Bavaria. After assessment of inclusion and exclusion criteria (s. below), patients were randomly assigned to one of the following three groups: (1) RTT with vertical tilt > 60°, with repetitive cyclic leg movements and with FES (RTT+F; The local ethics committee of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich approved the study and written informed consent was given by the patients’ legal guardians in accordance with the 1964 declaration of Helsinki. The study has been prospectively registered on ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT Number NCT02639481).