Gait in 5-year-old children with idiopathic clubfoot: A cohort study of 59 children, focusing on foot involvement and the contralateral foot

摘要

Background and purpose — Idiopathic clubfoot can be bilateral or unilateral; however, most studies of gait have assessed clubfoot cases as one uniform group. The contralateral foot in children with unilateral clubfoot has shown deviations in pedobarographic measurements, but it is seldom included in studies of gait. We evaluated gait in children with idiopathic clubfoot, concentrating on foot involvement.Patients and methods — Three-dimensional gait analyses of 59 children, mean age 5.4 years, with bilateral (n = 30) or unilateral (n = 29) idiopathic clubfoot were stratified into groups of bilateral, unilateral, or contralateral feet. Age-matched controls (n = 28) were evaluated for comparison. Gait assessment included: (1) discrete kinematic and kinetic parameters, and (2) gait deviation index for kinematics (GDI) and kinetics (GDI-k).Results — No differences in gait were found between bilateral and unilateral idiopathic clubfoot, but both groups deviated when compared to controls. Compared to control fe...