Multi-day monitoring of foot progression angles during unsupervised, real-world walking in people with and without knee osteoarthritis

• Published in: Clinical biomechanics (Bristol) 2023-05, Vol.105, p.105957-105957, Article 105957
• Main Authors: Charlton, Jesse M., Xia, Haisheng, Shull, Peter B., Eng, Janice J., Li, Linda C., Hunt, Michael A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Biomechanical Phenomena; Gait; Humans; Knee Joint; Knee osteoarthritis; Osteoarthritis, Knee; Real-world; Reproducibility of Results; Walking; Wearable sensors
• ISSN: 0268-0033; 1879-1271
• DOI: 10.1016/j.clinbiomech.2023.105957

Foot progression angle is a biomechanical target in gait modification interventions for knee osteoarthritis. To date, it has only been evaluated within laboratory settings. Adults with symptomatic knee osteoarthritis (n = 30) and healthy adults (n = 15) completed two conditions: 1) treadmill walking in the laboratory (5-min), and 2) real-world walking outside of the laboratory (1-week). Foot progression angle was estimated via shoe-embedded inertial sensing. We calculated the foot progression angle magnitude (median) and variability (interquartile range, coefficient of variation), and used mixed models to compare outcomes between the conditions, participant groups, and disease severities. Reliability was quantified by the intraclass correlation coefficient, standardized error of the measurement, and the minimum detectable change. Foot progression angle magnitude did not differ between groups or conditions but variability significantly higher in real-world walking (P