Evaluating the decision-making process through gait analysis in the treatment of cerebral palsy

Within the realm of cerebral palsy, there are a limited number of surgical interventions that are typically attempted for the correction of gait abnormalities, which may include lengthening, transferring or releasing muscles, as well as derotations and other osteotomies. Determining which type of intervention is necessary for a specific gait problem may be difficult, since there is much variation between both patients and clinicians. Therefore, the goal of this study is to investigate what factors within the gait analysis influence clinicians to select a certain procedure for a particular patient. These factors will be defined through a two-phase survey of clinicians. Based on the outcome of these data, the correlation between clinicians will be determined through a statistical analysis. As a result, this study may help to identify where disagreements between clinicians occur and provide motivation for the investigation of these differences. In addition, patient care and the utilization of gait analysis data may also be improved