Assessing the concurrent validity of a gait analysis system integrated into a smart walker in older adults with gait impairments.
Christian Werner, Georgia Chalvatzaki, Xanthi S Papageorgiou and 3 others
PMID 31131630WHAT IT FOUND
In older adults who use walkers, a smart walker’s built-in gait analysis matched a walkway for stride, swing and stance times, but did not agree closely enough for absolute stride length or gait speed.
Key findings
01The smart walker matched the walkway for temporal gait parameters: stride, swing and stance time had mean biases from -0.04 to 0.04 seconds and clinically acceptable percentage errors of 8.7% to 23.0%.
02For stride length and gait speed, the smart walker had mean biases of 0.20 m and 0.19 m/s and clinically not acceptable percentage errors of 31.3% to 42.3%.
03Absolute agreement was good to excellent for stride, swing and stance time, but poor to fair for stride length and gait speed.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
The study tested only short straight walking in a controlled laboratory environment, so it does not show how the smart walker performs in daily life or in less constrained movement. The participants were predominantly female, so the results may not generalize to males. The sample included only 25 older adults who used walkers or had usual gait speed below 0.6 m/s and no severe cognitive impairment, so it does not show performance in other older adults or in people with severe cognitive impairment. The study compared mean values from the same steps, not long-term continuous monitoring, so it does not confirm the system for ongoing gait analysis outside the lab.
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest. The study received European Union Framework Programme funding, and the funding source had no role in the design and conduct of the study, data collection, analysis, interpretation, or manuscript preparation, review and approval.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume the smart walker can replace a walkway for measuring absolute gait speed or stride length. The smart walker showed poor to fair absolute agreement for these spatial parameters and clinically unacceptable percentage errors, so its values are not interchangeable with GAITRite values.