Muscle-tendon surgery: effect on length and lengthening velocity of rectus femoris in cerebral palsy children gait

摘要

In cerebral palsy (CP), spasticity often induces troubles in muscle-tendon growth. One of the surgery purposes is to correct muscle-tendon length and the consequences of the spasticity. To improve the surgery decisions and results, the use of musculoskeletal model is already proposed (Delp et al. 1996; Arnold et al. 2006). The rectus femoris spasticity is considered as one of the causes of stiff knee gait. Rectus femoris geometric parameters have been studied in stiff knee gait, identifying altered patterns in length and its variations (Jonkers et al. 2006). Nevertheless no results have been published about the effect of rectus femoris surgery on its length and lengthening velocity during gait. We therefore developed a musculoskeletal model to compute those geometrical parameters and to study the effect of rectus femoris transfer on those parameters.