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Effects of narrow-base walking and dual tasking on gait spatiotemporal characteristics in anterior cruciate ligament-injured adults compared to healthy adults

  • Knee
  • Published:
Knee Surgery, Sports Traumatology, Arthroscopy Aims and scope

Abstract

Purpose

The present experiment was conducted to examine the hypothesis that challenging control through narrow-base walking and/or dual tasking affects ACL-injured adults more than healthy control adults.

Methods

Twenty male ACL-injured adults and twenty healthy male adults walked on a treadmill at a comfortable speed under two base-of-support conditions, normal-base versus narrow-base, with and without a cognitive task. Gait patterns were assessed using mean and variability of step length and mean and variability of step velocity. Cognitive performance was assessed using the number of correct counts in a backward counting task.

Results

Narrow-base walking resulted in a larger decrease in step length and a more pronounced increase in variability of step length and of step velocity in ACL-injured adults than in healthy adults. For most of the gait parameters and for backward counting performance, the dual-tasking effect was similar between the two groups.

Conclusions

ACL-injured adults adopt a more conservative and more unstable gait pattern during narrow-base walking. This can be largely explained by deficits of postural control in ACL-injured adults, which impairs gait under more balance-demanding conditions. The observation that the dual-tasking effect did not differ between the groups may be explained by the fact that walking is an automatic process that involves minimal use of attentional resources, even after ACL injury. Clinicians should consider the need to include aspects of terrain complexity, such as walking on a narrow walkway, in gait assessment and training of patients with ACL injury.

Level of evidence

III.

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Acknowledgments

This study is a part of the master thesis of Maryam Soltani, financially supported by Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences (grant no pht-9014).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Human Movement Sciences, Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences, MOVE Research Institute Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Masood Mazaheri & Idsart Kingma

  2. Musculoskeletal Research Center, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran

    Masood Mazaheri

  3. Department of Physical Therapy, School of Paramedical Sciences, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran

    Hossein Negahban

  4. Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation Research Center, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran

    Maryam Soltani, Mohammad Mehravar, Shirin Tajali & Masumeh Hessam

  5. Department of Physical Therapy, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Mahyar Salavati

Authors
  1. Masood Mazaheri
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  2. Hossein Negahban
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  3. Maryam Soltani
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  4. Mohammad Mehravar
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  5. Shirin Tajali
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  6. Masumeh Hessam
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  7. Mahyar Salavati
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  8. Idsart Kingma
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hossein Negahban.

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Mazaheri, M., Negahban, H., Soltani, M. et al. Effects of narrow-base walking and dual tasking on gait spatiotemporal characteristics in anterior cruciate ligament-injured adults compared to healthy adults. Knee Surg Sports Traumatol Arthrosc 25, 2528–2535 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00167-016-4014-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00167-016-4014-4

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