Inertial measurement units to evaluate the efficacity of Equino Varus Foot surgery in post stroke hemiparetic patients: a feasibility study.
Nicolas de l'Escalopier, Cyril Voisard, Sylvain Jung and 13 others
PMID 39407309WHAT IT FOUND
In 20 patients, most reported better walking after surgery, but the sensor-based gait scores did not change significantly.
The sensors worked reliably, yet they did not prove the surgery improved gait.
Key findings
01Most patients reported functional improvement and half stopped using a walking aid after surgery.
02The sensor-based gait scores did not show a significant improvement, only a non-significant trend.
03The sensor method was feasible and reproducible, but did not correlate statistically with the patient-reported goal scores.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The study was a feasibility pilot with a very small sample size (20 analysed), so it was not powered to detect gait changes. The primary outcome was the feasibility of the sensor tool, not the efficacy of the surgery, so no conclusion about surgical benefit can be drawn. There was no control group, so natural recovery or other factors could have influenced the functional scores. The sensor data did not correlate with the patient-reported outcomes, meaning the tool did not capture what mattered to the patients. Follow-up was only six months, which may be too short to see full gait adaptation.
Declared interests
No funding sources or conflicts of interest are explicitly declared in the provided text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that the surgery improved gait objectively. The sensor-based gait scores did not show a significant change, and the study was designed to test the tool's feasibility, not the surgery's efficacy.