Introduction: Recent military conflicts have resulted in a significant number of lower extremity injuries to U.S. service members that result in amputation or limb preservation (LP) procedures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Persons with lower limb trauma are at high risk for falls. Although there is a wide range of measures used to assess stability and fall-risk that include performance measures, temporal-spatial gait parameters, and nonlinear dynamic stability calculations, these measures are typically derived from fall-prone populations, such as older adults. Thus, it is unclear if these commonly used fall-risk indicators are effective at evaluating fall-risk in a younger, higher-functioning population of Service members with lower limb trauma.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Trunk postural control (TPC) is critical in maintaining balance following perturbations (i.e., avoiding falls), and impaired among persons with lower extremity trauma, contributing to elevated fall risk.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe metabolic cost of walking is due to muscle force generated to support body weight (BW), external work performed to redirect and accelerate the center of mass (CoM), and internal work performed to swing the limbs and maintain balance. We hypothesized that BW support would incur a greater and lower percentage of Net Metabolic Power (NMP) for uphill and downhill slopes, respectively, compared to level-ground walking. Additionally, we hypothesized that mass redirection would incur a greater and lower percentage of NMP for uphill and downhill slopes, respectively compared to level-ground walking.
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