Gait characteristics and pain assessment of symptomatic knee osteoarthritis

Abstract

The must-have clinical criterion or main symptom associated with knee osteoarthritis (OA) is knee pain. Gait alteration usually occur mainly to compensate the pain experienced at the knee joint. It consequently causes the deterioration of functional ability and affects activity of daily. The aim of the study is to extract kinematic gait features that characterize the knee OA gait and its association with pain assessment. Eight knee OA patients and five asymptomatic subjects were recruited and kinematic and spatiotemporal features were obtained using 3D Vicon motion analysis system during gait trial. There were 13 kinematic features extracted using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and only two features which are hip flexion/extension phase shift and knee flexion/extension range of motion have significant correlation with pain assessment using ICOAP and KOOS questionnaire.