Integrating Gait Analysis Systems in Clinical Rehabilitation Settings for Individuals With Lower Limb Amputation: A Narrative Review

Abstract

A primary goal of rehabilitative care for individuals with lower limb amputation (LLA) is to restore safe, effective gait. Traditional gait analysis, both observational and quantitative, assesses gait deviations in individuals with LLA to inform clinical management. Observational gait analysis performed in clinical settings can be highly subjective, whereas quantitative gait analysis is often costly, time-consuming, and therefore impractical to perform in point-of-care clinical settings. To enhance clinical decision-making for individuals with LLA, it is beneficial to identify commercially available gait analysis systems that can be efficiently and effectively utilized in clinical settings. This narrative review presents categories of commercially available gait analysis systems, their capabilities, and prior implementation for gait analysis of individuals with LLA in clinical settings. Twenty-three articles of commercially available gait analysis systems (instrumented treadmills, instrumented walkways, inertial measurement unit-based, and markerless motion capture (MMC)) for the LLA population were included. This review of clinical applications of commercially available gait analysis systems identifies gaps in current clinical practice and offers recommendations to incorporate point-of-care gait analysis within the prosthetic phase of rehabilitation for individuals with LLA.

Keywords: clinical gait analysis; lower limb amputation; military; prosthetics; rehabilitation.