VALIDATION OF A GAIT ANALYSIS METHOD TO QUANTIFY LOCOMOTION IN MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY

The project is aimed at introducing a quantitative method assessing walking disability in myodystrophic patients, based on advanced technologies of gait analysis. The information obtained through this approach, which has already been applied in several pathologies, can be used to monitor disease progression, to plan proper rehabilitative interventions (physical therapy, orthoses, drugs, surgery), to quantify the effect of these treatments, and, indirectly, to assess the validity of treatments themselves. To validate the method proposed, we intend to show the following: i) it is feasible in subjects with muscle weakness like myodystrophic patients, ii) the measures obtained are sufficiently repeatable and the method is at least as accurate as other clinical/functional assessment methods, iii) our method has a higher discrimination capability than previously adopted methods. This latter feature is of major interest, as it can make the method a valuable tool and could contribute to further advancement in the treatment of muscular dystrophies. The experimental validation will be made on two populations of patients affected by Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy respectively, as these forms account for approximately 50% of all muscular dystrophies. The method is not at all invasive, and consists in visualizing patients’ movement in a special laboratory by means of a number of TV-cameras. The patients are asked to walk spontaneously on level, and to walk on and off a small foot-block. A system for image processing collects also data from a force plate embedded in the floor. Then it provides biomechanical quantities like joint angles, velocities, joint moments and powers. Proper indexes of performance can be obtained and used to synthetically quantify the functional loss.