Article

The dissemination of gait analysis as a clinical assessment tool requires the
results to be consistent, irrespective of the laboratory. In this work a baseline
assessment of between site consistency of one healthy subject examined at 7
different laboratories is presented. Anthropometric and spatio-temporal
parameters, pelvis and lower limb joint rotations, joint sagittal moments and
powers, and ground reaction forces were compared. The consistency between
laboratories for single parameters was assessed by the median absolute deviation
and maximum difference, for curves by linear regression. Twenty-one lab-to-lab
comparisons were performed and averaged. Large differences were found between the
characteristics of the laboratories (i.e. motion capture systems and protocols).
Different values for the anthropometric parameters were found, with the largest
variability for a pelvis measurement. The spatio-temporal parameters were in
general consistent. Segment and joint kinematics consistency was in general high
(R2>0.90), except for hip and knee joint rotations. The main difference among
curves was a vertical shift associated to the corresponding value in the static
position. The consistency between joint sagittal moments ranged form R2=0.90 at
the ankle to R2=0.66 at the hip, the latter was increasing when comparing
separately laboratories using the same protocol. Pattern similarity was good for
ankle power but not satisfactory for knee and hip power. The force was found the
most consistent, as expected. The differences found were in general lower than
the established minimum detectable changes for gait kinematics and kinetics for
healthy adults.
CI - Copyright (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Langue : ANGLAIS