Reliability of kinematic parameters related to the Timed Up and Go Test in patients with gait impairments

Abstract

Pathologies which imply motor impairment are most common and very studied. The aim of the study is to explore the repeatability of kinematic parameters related to the Timed Up and Go test in different pathologies: hemiparesis, femur fracture, hip replacement and knee replacement. We performed the study instrumenting the patients with a commercial wearable inertial system for gait analysis: G-WALK System by BTS Bioengineering Inc. A cohort of 40 patients with neurological and orthopedic pathologies was enrolled in the study. Repeatability was assessed through the calculation of the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient. Study results showed that the motion parameters exhibited different repeatability. Moreover their repeatability changed on the basis of the kind of pathology under examination. The study demonstrated the importance of a repeatability study to be a valuable approach to select the kinematic parameters which are be able to better characterize a specific pathology and consequently the rehabilitation outcome of patients. The future investigations on enriched datasets will further confirm these preliminary results.