Upper extremity kinetics during walker-assisted gait of knee joint stiffness simulation

Because of various inflammations and fractures of low limbs, the number of patients with knee joint stiffness is increasing. Walkers are commonly prescribed to improve these patients´ stability and ambulatory ability. The evaluation on the assisted walking effect has become a hot problem, whose prerequisite is a comprehensive mechanical understanding of the upper extremity force. In order to study the upper extremity kinetics during walker-assisted gait of knee joint stiffness, this paper developed a new method to collect upper extremity kinetics data based on a special-designed walker dynamometer system. Handle reaction vector (HRV) data were collected from 15 healthy right-handed young subjects by simulation experiments for four knee joint stiffness modes. T test and support vector machine (SVM) were used to analyze these HRV data. The results indicated that knee joint stiffness had a great influence on the upper extremity force during the walker-assisted walking. The proposed method is hoped to beneficially influence walker-assisted gait retraining strategies for knee joint stiffness.