Abstract
Measurements of the gait of 42 patients with osteoarthritis of the hip are made using only a pair of small force plates with computer interfacing. The use of more complex and expensive television systems is thus avoided.
The force between the foot and plate is measured during gait, resolved into vertical, horizontal, and lateral force components, and graphs of the time variations of these components produced. It is shown that an accurate on-line assessment of pre- and post-operative gait can be made, but only by reference to all three force component curves.
A numerical assessment of the gait condition is obtained as the total of scores for clearly identified separate features of each curve. This helps the clinician to arrive at a firm value and should reduce subjective variations arising from attempts to assign a single overall number for the ‘quality’ of each curve.
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