Perspectives on ankle-foot technology for improving gait performance of children with Cerebral Palsy in daily-life: requirements, needs and wishes.
Cristina Bayón, Marleen van Hoorn, Antonio Barrientos and 3 others
PMID 37046284WHAT IT FOUND
Clinicians and families with cerebral palsy disagree on what matters most in ankle-foot orthoses.
Families prioritise a normal-looking walk and comfort, while clinicians prioritise terrain adaptability. Both groups report low confidence in prescribing devices based on clinic assessments alone.
Key findings
01End-users rated replicability of normal walking patterns as significantly more important than professionals did, whereas professionals prioritised adaptability to walking terrain.
02Only 44.6% of health care professionals felt confident prescribing the correct AFO type, and 79.3% believed patient performance in the clinic differs from real-life settings.
03Comfort while wearing and ease of putting on/taking off were the top-rated design features by both groups, rated important or very important by more than 90% of respondents.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The sample was heavily skewed towards Spain and The Netherlands, which may not represent global perspectives. Recruitment was via snowball sampling and online surveys, which introduces selection bias towards those already engaged with the technology or research community. Only 36 end-users responded, which is a small number for generalizing patient preferences. Professionals included researchers and vendors, not just clinicians, which may dilute the clinical perspective. The study reports perceptions and preferences, not actual clinical outcomes or device efficacy.
Declared interests
Funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación and the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of Spain, and the Dutch Research Council NWO. The text does not explicitly declare individual author conflicts of interest, though one affiliation mentioned is Gillette Children’s, a major pediatric rehabilitation center.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret these preference rankings as evidence that any specific AFO design improves walking efficiency or reduces energy cost. This study reports what stakeholders want, not what current technology actually achieves clinically.