DEDUCTION OF INDICATORS PERMITTING TO OBJECTIVELY CLASSIFY SPASTIC HEMIPLEGIC GAIT

Hemiplegia is a motor dysfunction with neuromuscular implications of unilateral body predominance including gait. Its analysis and interpretation involves a multidisciplinary staff The specialists or experts: traumatologists, physiotherapists and biomedical engineers, analyze kinematic curves in order to classify the patient in one of the hemiplegic types proposed by Gage. The classification is empirical, depending on the experience, errors or successes of the specialist, and subjective, since its analysis is the result of comparing and articulation ranges. The present study aims to identify the indicators utilized by the specialists to classify the type of hemiplegia to which recordings previously classified belong. Twenty four records were randomly selected out of a sample of 186 patients from the Gait Laboratory of the Children Orthopedic Hospital, Caracas, Venezuela. The methodology employed is the triangulation of the analysis performed to classify or validate the errors and successes of the expert during the process of interpretation. A sensitivity of 100% is obtained to differentiate type 1 patients, of 67% for type 2 patients, 50% for type 3 and 83% for those of type 4. The indicators are expressed by means of a language known by the specialists, modeled with an algorithm coherent to the analysis procedure from distal to proximal, capable of precisely describing the hemiplegic gait. The sensitivity results infer an appropriate diagnosis of the modeled object that assures a treatment adequate to the type of hemiplegia.