Gait Analysis

Gait Analysis

Ronald F. Altman, C.P.O. *

The following series of articles on Gait Analysis were based on a project which was supported by the Newington Children's Hospital Research Fund.

The following series of articles all have to do with using gait analysis, in orthotics as well as prosthetics, to improve function. The Gage/Hicks study traces gait analysis in prosthetics from Inman forward, and the individual articles illustrate contemporary laboratory approaches to the objective assessment of gait.

Fundamental to optimal lower-extremity prosthetic/orthotic service is an analysis of the gait of the patient. To the extent the method of analysis fails to provide adequate objective or useful information about gait, it allows for the possibility and probability that a less than optimum fit and/or alignment configuration has been or will be achieved.

While gait analysis has long been an established procedure of varying objectivity in prosthetics, in orthotics the use of gait analysis has been rather ineffectual in assisting to optimize gait, a process which for the most part fails to go beyond a most rudimentary observation. This is due in part to the rudimentary functional characteristics of most orthoses.

Advances in our profession as well as technology and materials can and do result in more functional orthoses. If we are going to provide the optimal orthotic design configuration for any given patient, it is essential that we define gait characteristics more precisely and reliably.

Though not yet universally available, the increasing number of gait analysis facilities will soon benefit us all—patients and practitioners alike—as we gain access to the resulting information flow in formats readily usable by orthotists and prosthetists.