TY  - JOUR
A1  - Winter, Corinna
A1  - Brandes, Mirko
A1  - Müller, Carsten
A1  - Schubert, Tim
A1  - Ringling, Michael
A1  - Hillmann, Axel
A1  - Rosenbaum, Dieter
A1  - Schulte, Tim T.
T1  - Walking ability during daily life in patients with osteoarthritis of the knee or the hip and lumbar spinal stenosis
JF  - BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders
N2  - Background

Degenerative musculoskeletal disorders are among the most frequent diseases occurring in adulthood, often impairing patients' functional mobility and physical activity. The aim of the present study was to investigate and compare the impact of three frequent degenerative musculoskeletal disorders -- knee osteoarthritis (knee OA), hip osteoarthritis (hip OA) and lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) -- on patients' walking ability.
Methods

The study included 120 participants, with 30 in each patient group and 30 healthy control individuals. A uniaxial accelerometer, the StepWatch™ Activity Monitor (Orthocare Innovations, Seattle, Washington, USA), was used to determine the volume (number of gait cycles per day) and intensity (gait cycles per minute) of walking ability. Non-parametric testing was used for all statistical analyses.
Results

Both the volume and the intensity of walking ability were significantly lower among the patients in comparison with the healthy control individuals (p < 0.001). Patients with LSS spent 0.4 (IQR 2.8) min/day doing moderately intense walking (>50 gait cycles/min), which was significantly lower in comparison with patients with knee and hip OA at 2.5 (IQR 4.4) and 3.4 (IQR 16.1) min/day, respectively (p < 0.001). No correlations between demographic or anthropometric data and walking ability were found. No technical problems or measuring errors occurred with any of the measurements.
Conclusions

Patients with degenerative musculoskeletal disorders suffer limitations in their walking ability. Objective assessment of walking ability appeared to be an easy and feasible tool for measuring such limitations as it provides baseline data and objective information that are more precise than the patients' own subjective estimates. In everyday practice, objective activity assessment can provide feedback for clinicians regarding patients' performance during everyday life and the extent to which this confirms the results of clinical investigations. The method can also be used as a way of encouraging patients to develop a more active lifestyle.
KW  - Gait Cycle
KW  - Lumbar Spinal Stenosis
KW  - Walking Ability
KW  - Healthy Control Individual
KW  - Zygapophyseal Joint
Y1  - 2010
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:hbz:836-opus-168673
VL  - 11
IS  - 233
SP  - 1
EP  - 7
ER  -