Introduction:

Passive leg cycling is considered as a tool in rehabilitation of people with spinal cord injury (SCI).

Objective:

To review the scientific evidence on the clinical effects produced by interventions that use passive leg cycling in people with chronic thoracic spinal cord injury.

Methodology:

Narrative review. A search was performed by using the MEDLINE, CINAHL, LILACS, PEDro and Clinicalkey databases, for articles in English and Spanish, with terms such as "spinal cord injury", "thoracic injuries", "passive pedaling", "passive cycling" and "protocol", among others.

Results:

14 papers were included in our research which described limited effects at the level of the cardiovascular, neuromuscular and musculoskeletal systems. We found clinical heterogeneity in the subjects, as well as differences in the cycling parameters used by authors.

Conclusions:

Studies of PP in people with chronic thoracic SCI mostly evaluated the effect of a single session. Cardiovascular changes were mostly studied; however, more evidence is needed.