Asymmetrical gait in adolescents with idiopathic scoliosis

Jae Hyuk Yang, Seung Woo Suh, Paul S. Sung, Woo Hyung Park

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64 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Purpose: This study investigated side-to-side gait asymmetry in subjects with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis. Methods: There were 20 adolescents with idiopathic scoliosis and 20 age-matched control subjects, who participated in the study. To minimize confounding effects, we recruited patients with similar spinal curvature for the scoliosis group, and all participants are right hand dominant. The participants were instructed to ambulate on a 10 m walkway while barefoot. There were two force plates in the middle of the walkway. The ground reaction force (GRF) and angular displacements of six segments (foot, shank, thigh, pelvis, trunk, and head) were measured during one gait cycle based on the right and left lower extremities. To remove the positional information in the kinematic data, the derivative of angular displacement in each segment was calculated. To evaluate the side-to-side gait symmetry, we calculated the cross-correlation of each bilateral gait parameter. Results: In the kinematics, the scoliosis group demonstrated asymmetrical gait in the frontal and transverse planes compared to the control group. In the GRF data, the scoliosis group demonstrated asymmetrical gait in the medial-lateral (M/L) direction compared to the control group. Conclusions: These results indicated that the scoliosis group produced an asymmetrical rotation pattern of the segments bilaterally in the frontal and transverse planes, resulting in asymmetrical GRF patterns in the M/L direction. This asymmetrical gait may be produced by changes in global postural control during gait and not simply by changes in control of only one or two specific segments.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2407-2413
Number of pages7
JournalEuropean Spine Journal
Volume22
Issue number11
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2013 Nov

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Acknowledgments This work was supported by the Institute of Health Science Grant at Korea University and the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (2010-0003015). Part of this study was also supported by the Korea Healthcare Technology R&D project (A110416).

Keywords

  • Adolescent idiopathic scoliosis
  • Cross-correlation
  • Gait asymmetry
  • Ground reaction force
  • Kinematics

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Surgery
  • Orthopedics and Sports Medicine

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