Article

While feedback-controlled treadmills with a virtual reality could potentially
offer advantages for clinical gait analysis and training, the effect of
self-paced walking and the virtual environment on the gait pattern of children
and different patient groups remains unknown. This study examined the effect of
self-paced (SP) versus fixed speed (FS) walking and of walking with and without a
virtual reality (VR) in 11 typically developing (TD) children and nine children
with cerebral palsy (CP). We found that subjects walked in SP mode with twice as
much between-stride walking speed variability (p<0.01), fluctuating over multiple
strides. There was no main effect of SP on kinematics or kinetics, but small
interaction effects between SP and group (TD versus CP) were found for five out
of 33 parameters. This suggests that children with CP might need more time to
familiarize to SP walking, however, these differences were generally too small to
be clinically relevant. The VR environment did not affect the kinematic or
kinetic parameters, but walking with VR was rated as more similar to overground
walking by both groups (p=0.02). The results of this study indicate that both SP
and FS walking, with and without VR, can be used interchangeably for treadmill-based clinical gait analysis in children with and without CP.
CI - Copyright (c) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Langue : ANGLAIS