Walker Assisted Gait in Children with Cerebral Palsy: Instrumentation and System Design

Instrumentation and System Design K.M. Baker, J.T. Long, S. Hassani, J. Lipsey, K. Reiners, W. Olson, P. Johnson, L. Kliebhan, J.D. Ackman, J.P. Schwab, G.F. Harris 1 Orthopaedic and Rehabilitation Engineering Center (OREC), Milwaukee, WI 2 Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI 3 Motion Analysis Laboratory, Shriners Hospital for Children, Chicago, IL Introduction Cerebral palsy (CP) is a condition characterized by a motor disorder that is usually diagnosed during the early stages of life. It occurs from brain damage and has symptoms including postural instability and abnormal muscle tone. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 10,000 children in the United States develop CP each year [1]. A large number of CP patients have spastic diplegic cerebral palsy, in which the disorder affects the lower extremities more severely than the upper extremities and many use walkers. Although walkers typically support 1/3 of an adult’s body weight during rehabilitation (poststroke, post surgery, etc.), the support provided to a child with CP has not been explored. Because children with spastic diplegic cerebral palsy are asymmetric in terms of extremity involvement, so too are the forces applied to their walker handles. The purpose of this work is to develop a reliable quantitative system to analyze upper extremity (UE) kinetics in children with CP during walker assisted gait (anterior and posterior).