Authors: Josien C van den Noort Frans Steenbrink Sanne Roeles Jaap Harlaar
Publish Date: 2014/12/06
Volume: 53, Issue: 3, Pages: 275-286
Abstract
Realtime visual feedback might be effective for gait retraining in patients with knee osteoarthritis to potentially relieve symptoms and postpone knee replacement In this study we investigated the effect of various types of realtime visual feedback on a kinetic and a kinematic gait parameter and the different kinematic strategies adopted to reduce knee load Seventeen healthy subjects walked on an instrumented treadmill while receiving realtime visual kinetic feedback aimed at minimizing the external knee adduction moment KAdM reflecting the knee load or kinematic feedback on the hip internal rotation angle HIR a gait modification to reduce the KAdM Four types of visual feedback bar polar plot color change graph were provided The KAdM decreased by 50 with kinetic feedback while kinematic feedback resulted in an HIR increase of 8° but no decrease in KAdM The degree of change was not influenced by the type of visual feedback The kinematic changes that reduced KAdM were increased toein increased step width and decreased hip adduction Realtime visual feedback can effectively modify gait parameters Feedback of the KAdM may be more effective in reducing the KAdM than controlling a kinematic parameter that is assumed to unload the knee
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