ESMAC-SIAMOC 2001 Joint Congress: Gait Events in Hip Osteoarthritis and Total Hip Replaced Patients Evaluated by Two different Gait Analysis Systems

Comprehensive gait analysis usually includes kinematics, kinetics, and electromyography. A complex instrumentation is thus required that only can be installed in a dedicated laboratory. These techniques are valuable to support clinical decisions and to evaluate the results. However, in several instances, a simplified analysis, concentrated on few selected gait parameters, can be valuable as well. One problem, however, is to ascertain that the computed parameters are correct and correspond to what could be measured by other, more complicated methods. A second point is to verify the feasibility of the measurement in pathologic cases. A third point is to understand the validity and the usefulness of the computed parameters to demonstrate the benefit for the clinical practice. In this study we describe an ambulatory system for temporal parameters estimation using gyroscopes. The accuracy of the measurement was assessed using a standard provided by an Elite system. To show the effectiveness of the method, gait parameters were obtained in patients with hip osteoarthrosis and after arthoplasty