Abstract
Manual carrying of heavy weight poses a major risk for work-related low back injury. Body-worn inertial sensors present opportunities to study the effects of ambulatory work tasks such as load carriage in more realistic conditions. An immediate effect of load carriage is reflected in altered gait kinematics. To determine the effects of load carriage mode and magnitude on gait parameters using body-worn angular rate gyroscopes, two laboratory experiments (n = 9 and n = 10, respectively) were conducted. Participants performed walk trials at self-selected speeds while carrying hand loads in two modes (two-handed side vs. anterior) at four load levels (empty-handed, 4.5 kg, 9.1 kg, and 13.6 kg). Six measures of postural sway and three measures of thoracic-pelvic coordination were calculated from data recorded by four body-worn gyroscopes for 1517 gait cycles. Results demonstrated that, after adjusting for relative walking speed, thoracic-pelvic sway, and movement coordination particularly in the coronal and transverse planes, characterized by gyroscope-based kinematic gait parameters, are systematically altered by the mode of load carriage and load magnitude. Similar trends were obtained for an anthropometrically homogenous (Expt-1) and diverse (Expt-2) sample after adjusting for individual differences in relative walking speed. Measures of thoracic-pelvic coordination and sway showed trends of significant practical relevance and may provide sufficient information to typify alterations in gait across two-handed side vs. anterior load carriage of different load magnitudes. This study contributes to understanding the effects of manual load carriage on thoracic-pelvic movement and the potential application of body-worn gyroscopes to measuring these gait adaptations in naturalistic work settings.
Highlights
Load carriage is common in daily activities
The purpose of this study was to quantify the effects of hand loads during two-handed side and anterior load carriage on thoracic-pelvic sway and coordination obtained from body-worn gyroscopes while walking at a self-selected speed
Thoracic-pelvic coordination when walking is challenged by the addition of external hand loads
Summary
Load carriage is common in daily activities. Manual load carriage is prevalent and inevitable in many occupations such as military [1], firefighting [2], and construction work [3], and for Manual Material Handling (MMH) work in manufacturing [4], warehousing [5], packaging, and distribution [6,7]. In a comprehensive study of MMH conducted at 2442 industrial locations, load carriage represented 15.7% of all MMH tasks recorded and was superseded only by lifting-lowering [8]. Routine load carriage is associated with an increased risk of work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs) in the back [9,10] and upper and lower limbs [11,12].
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