Instrumented Gait Analysis

Original Editor - Mariam Hashem

Top Contributors - Mariam Hashem, Jess Bell, Aminat Abolade, Kim Jackson, Tony Lowe and Tarina van der Stockt

What is Normal Gait?

Normal gait is a range of typical gait patterns, found in a healthy population, presenting similar characteristics. Indeed people present a certain degree of variability that is called inter-subject variability is due to differences in age, gender, anatomical differences, and differences in muscular strength.

for example. if we are to assess the gait of an 80 years old man and a 20 years old woman, both without any pathologies affecting gait. They might present completely different gait patterns. However, they will both be considered physiological or normal because their gait patterns will be within the range of normality corresponding to their own population. So when assessing the gait of a patient in physiotherapy, the idea is to confront the gait parameters we find with our own patient against the range of normality established for the corresponding population.

Visual Gait Analysis

A commonly used method by physiotherapists to investigate gait problems with their patients using a smartphone or any video recording instrument.

Benefits:

• Allows peer-reviewing, showing your colleagues the videos and discussing the presented case
• Reproducible, by taking multiple videos you can track your patient's progression
• Allows observing the gait from multiple angles to detect deviations in multiple plans

Disadvantages:

• Has poor reliability
• It doesn't allow observing high-velocity events, force in moments during walking.
• Subjective, It depends on the observer therefore prone to error

Instrumented Gait Analysis

Refers to the collection of quantitative data related to the gait of our patients, such as videography, kinematics, kinetics, oxygen consumption, and electromyography.

Literature suggests that instrumented gait analysis is a valuable tool in clinical practice for the diagnosis, the assessment, and the management of patients affected by conditions altering gait. And in the research field, instrumented gait analysis is often used to evaluate the effectiveness of treatments such as foot orthoses and to explore the consequences of pathologies related to gait, like Rheumatoid Arthritis.

• To apply to clinical practice
• To get familiar with the terminology that is often used in research publications and scientific articles