An instrumented 10 m walk test for post stroke patients via baropodographic measurements and averaging

• Published in: Gait & posture Vol. 29; pp. e19 - e20
• Main Authors: D’Amico, M, Roncoletta, P, Branchini, W, Tulli, D, Tomassini, M, Ciarrocca, F, Vallasciani, M
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01-01-2009
• Subjects: Orthopedics
• ISSN: 0966-6362; 1879-2219
• DOI: 10.1016/j.gaitpost.2008.10.032

Introduction: 10 m walk test is routinely used in rehabilitation to establish gait ability level in post-stroke patients. However this test provides only the performance duration, the number of steps, the average velocity and step length. No quantitative indications about gait asymmetry and foot/floor interaction are available. Baropodography is an approach that allows to study and inspect a wide variety of foot and gait disorders. Among the various available measuring systems, the use of in-shoe underfoot insoles represents a very unobtrusive and useful tool to quantify normal and pathological baropodographic gait characteristics by allowing the recording of multiple gait cycles. Given its minimum encumbrance we chose such device to provide a quantitative base to evaluate gait ability in post stroke patients. The intrinsic variability connected to posture and gait (both normal and pathological one), suggests to approach biomechanics of movement in terms of the identification of an average behaviour and a band of variability around this latter. This concept is the basis of the general approach our group is working on, since many years, to establish a set of general algorithms and mathematical/statistical tools for the quantitative study of movement and posture. This paper presents a new methodology to analyse and describe subjects gait characteristics, using baropodographic measurements, by introducing an original mathematicalstatistical procedure to assess the full Mean Gait Cycle from a set of multiple 10 m walk trials. Moreover this pilot study aimed to identify among all the possible biomechanical baropodographic parameters/variables a suitable set to be used to fully describe the foot/floor interaction in post stroke patients and to define the statistical framework to perform side to side and pre and post treatment comparisons.