Quantitative assessment of early biomechanical modifications in diabetic foot patients: the role of foot kinematics and
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JNER
JOURNAL OF NEUROENGINEERING AND REHABILITATION
RESEARCH
Open Access
Quantitative assessment of early biomechanical modifications in diabetic foot patients: the role of foot kinematics and step width Giuseppe Lamola1*, Martina Venturi1, Dario Martelli2, Elisabetta Iacopi3, Chiara Fanciullacci1,2, Alberto Coppelli3, Bruno Rossi1, Alberto Piaggesi3 and Carmelo Chisari1
Abstract Background: Forefoot ulcers (FU) are one of the most disabling and relevant chronic complications of diabetes mellitus (DM). In recent years there is emerging awareness that a better understanding of the biomechanical factors underlying the diabetic ulcer could lead to improve the management of the disease, with significant socio-economic impacts. Our purpose was to try to detect early biomechanical factors associated with disease progression. Methods: Thirty subjects (M/F: 22/8; mean age ± SD: 61,84 ± 10 years) with diagnosis of type II DM were included. The participants were divided into 3 groups (10 subjects per group) according to the stage of evolution of the disease: Group 1, subjects with newly diagnosed type II DM, without clinical or instrumental diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) nor FU (group called “DM”); Group 2, with DPN but without FU (group called “DPN”); Group 3, with DPN and FU (group called “DNU”). All subjects underwent 3-D Gait Analysis during walking at self-selected speed, measuring spatio-temporal, kinematic and kinetic parameters and focusing on ankle and foot joints. The comparative analysis of values between groups was performed using 1-way ANOVA. We also investigated group to group differences with Tukey HSD test. The results taken into consideration were those with a significance of P < 0,05. 95 % confidence interval was also calculated. Results: A progressive and significant trend of reduction of ROM in flexion-extension of the metatarso-phalangeal joint (P = 0.0038) and increasing of step width (P = 0.0265) with the advance of the disease was evident, with a statistically significant difference comparing subjects with recently diagnosed diabetes mellitus and subjects with diabetic neuropathy and foot ulcer (P = 0.0048 for ROM and P = 0.0248 for step width at Tukey’s test). Conclusions: The results provide evidence that foot segmental kinematics, along with step width, can be proposed as simple and clear indicators of disease progression. This can be the starting point for planning more targeted strategies to prevent the occurrence and the recurrence of a FU in diabetic subjects. Keywords: Type 2 diabetes mellitus, Foot ulcer, Diabetic neuropathy, Gait analysis
* Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Unit of Neurorehabilitation, Department of Neuroscience, University Hospital of Pisa, Via Paradisa 2, 56124 Pisa, Italy Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © 2015 Lamola et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted
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