A simple method to assess walking deficits in people with knee or ankle pain

What is it about?

Complex Injuries to knee or ankle can lead to permanent disabilities and chronic pain. In particular, walking deficits are most often observed: the gait become assymetric, slow and unsteady (limping). Interventions, such as surgery, physical therapy or intensive rehabilitation, can improve patients' status. It is important to have assessement tools capable to evaluate the efficacy of those interventions on gait quality. Classical methods for the study of walking abilities rely on short walk tests or video analysis of the gait. One major drawback of these approaches is that they are limited spatially and temporally. Therefore, we postulated that measuring gaits over a long period in free-living condtions could bring further information about true walking capacities.

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Why is it important?

We used a simple accelerometer, similar to those found in smartphones, to gather information about gait and walking capacities in free-living conditions over one week. We studied 66 patients suffering from after-effects of injuries to knee or ankle. They exhibited chronic pain and were hospitalized for intensive rehabilitiation. For comparison, we also measured 81 healthy adults. The results attest the validity of the method: we were able to differentiate between patients and healthy participants. In adition, two measured parameters were similar to a standard evaluation of walking capacity.

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