Physiological Electromyographic Activations Patterns of Lower Limb Muscle in Children

Abstract

Kinesiological electromyography (KEMG) is an essential part of gait analysis as it supports clinicians with the objective assessment of muscular function during walking. During the gait cycle muscles are active with definite actions aimed at controlling joints in order to accomplish requirements of gait such as stability, loading acceptance, and progression. The knowledge of the development of normal EMG activity is of relevance in interpreting gait analysis data. While there is a wide literature on normative kinematics and kinetics data in children, only a few studies reported reference KEMG dataset on a paediatric population and on the maturation of gait in children. The available literature reported that the surface KEMG in children has a significant amount of variability, which should be taken into consideration when performing clinical interpretations. The KEMG timing and duration in normal children can vary with age, body height, body weight, gait velocity and stride length. Moreover, there is evidence that within session EMG variability in children aged 6-8 years is twice than that of adults. Although children in this age range can be considered to have a mature walk, variability about the mean performance continues to develop for many years and stable locomotion may be achieved despite significant variability in the muscle recruitment patterns. Further studies using accurate techniques of signal detection and analysis are required to improve our knowledge on physiological and pathological patterns of muscular activation in children.