Occupation related gait alteration: A systematic review

N. Esakkiammal, Dr. R. Archana, Dr. Johnson WMS

Bharath Institute of Higher Education and Research, Chennai, Tamilnadu, India.

ABSTRACT

Kinematics describes the way the body moves. The human anatomy is an extremely complex and comprehensive description of how all body parts move. The systemic study of human motion during walking is referred to as gait analysis and the related advanced analysis methods have been in practice in the medical field in current years. People while working maintains the same posture for a long time like workers in the field of construction, carrying heavy load, automotive, agriculture and army are highly exposed to fatigue and work-related injuries. In this review article, the occupational hazard as a threat to the kinematic alteration of the lower limb is reconsidered and can be approached for prevention and further research on occupational related gait changes. A wide variety number of studies have reported categorization prototypes of gait but the literature survey addressing exclusively the changes in the data with regard to gait categorization is very inadequate. To aim at the same a vivid electronic search was also done on Pubmed, Scopus, Embase, Physiotherapy evidence database, Cochrane library, and Web of Science databases. Research Questions and methodology arrived with the search. After the full-text screening of the literature 20 studies were selected for critical evaluation. The idea of the same enabled us to propose to evaluate and appraise the alterations in the gait of workers and would be helpful in the future to further research on the occupational impact.

Keywords:

Gait analysis, Occupational Gait Alteration, Kinematic Gait changes, Functional Gait Adaptation, Working postures