Assessing Site Specificity of Osteoarthritic Gait Kinematics with Wearable Sensors and Their Association with Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs): Knee versus Hip Osteoarthritis.

Corina Nüesch,Geert Pagenstert,Christian Egloff,Karl Stoffel,Anke Eckardt,Thomas Ilchmann,Petros Ismailidis,David Koch,Annegret Mündermann

doi:10.3390/s21165363

Abstract

There is a great need for quantitative outcomes reflecting the functional status in patients with knee or hip osteoarthritis (OA) to advance the development and investigation of interventions for OA. The purpose of this study was to determine if gait kinematics specific to the disease—i.e., knee versus hip OA—can be identified using wearable sensors and statistical parametric mapping (SPM) and whether disease-related gait deviations are associated with patient reported outcome measures. 113 participants (N = 29 unilateral knee OA; N = 30 unilateral hip OA; N = 54 age-matched asymptomatic persons) completed gait analysis with wearable sensors and the Knee/Hip Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS/HOOS). Data were analyzed using SPM. Knee and hip kinematics differed between patients with knee OA and patients with hip OA (up to 14°, p < 0.001 for knee and 8°, p = 0.003 for hip kinematics), and differences from controls were more pronounced in the affected than unaffected leg of patients. The observed deviations in ankle, knee and hip kinematic trajectories from controls were associated with KOOS/HOOS in both groups. Capturing gait kinematics using wearables has a large potential for application as outcome in clinical trials and for monitoring treatment success in patients with knee or hip OA and in large cohorts representing a major advancement in research on musculoskeletal diseases.

Highlights

The purpose of this study was to determine if gait kinematics specific to the disease—i.e., knee versus hip OA—can be identified using wearable sensors and statistical parametric mapping (SPM) and whether disease-related gait deviations are associated with patients reported outcome measures (PROMs)
The purpose of this study was to determine if gait kinematics specific to knee versus hip OA can be identified using wearable sensors and SPM and whether disease-related gait deviations are associated with PROMs
Known kinematic patterns associated with knee or hip OA can be measured with a wearable inertial sensor system, but these gait alterations are specific to knee or hip OA, respectively

Summary

Introduction

Knee and hip osteoarthritis (OA) are very common degenerative joint diseases that will affect up to 25% of the population during a lifetime [1]. To date, diagnostics for early OA are lacking and its treatment focuses primarily on alleviating symptoms. The development and investigation of interventions such as pharmaceutics is challenging as clinical trials currently rely on patients reported outcome measures (PROMs) that are subjective, fail to discriminate good from very good condition (low ceiling effect) [2] or are mostly influenced by pain and do not reflect function [3].

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