Lai Huahao, Huang Wenhan

hwh_Dr.Wong@link.cuhk.edu.hk

THE “Gait Map Alliance Establishment and Multi-center Clinical Research Launch Meeting and Gait Map Expert Consensus 1st Anniversary Symposium” was successfully held in Guangzhou last month. This conference is the first milestone of this year’s “Gait Map Alliance” series of activities, gathering a number of experts and professors who have developed or are developing the clinical application of gait map technology.

The meeting was chaired by Dr. Huang Wenhan and Professor Zhang Yu, from Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital. The gait graph is the embodiment of digital medicine in clinical gait research. Through the application of various digital technologies for the analysis of human gait, it is presented as a gait map that quantitatively describes the movement of joints with six degrees of freedom. With the continuous improvement and accumulation of gait map data collection and analysis technology, it will help with early screening, diagnosis and treatment of joint, muscle and nervous system diseases, and allow patients to obtain better digital medical services. It conforms to the country’s big health strategy of using data as a new production factor, which helps to accelerate the digital development of orthopedics, and helps to develop and establish a digital evaluation center for joint motor function.

Huang said that gait analysis technology is an inspection method that uses biomedical and mechanical means to detect and analyze walking patterns, which reveals the key links and influencing factors of gait changes. In recent years, the application of gait maps has gradually become popular, especially regarding knee joint motor function, diagnosis and treatment evaluation and assisted rehabilitation of common diseases. Additionally, Huang gave a detailed report on the “Gait Map Multi-Center Clinical Research Protocol,” showing the background, purpose, objects, code allocation, form registration, study design, inclusion and exclusion criteria, information collection, preliminary preparations, testing actions, study scheduling, scheduling of other specific contents, and a preliminary outlook on the expected output and shared results of the multi-center clinical study of gait charts.

Zhang Yu shared details on the clinical application of gait maps, starting from the functional evaluation of the knee, hip and ankle joints, involving normal people, people with hypermobility of the whole body, patients with ACL injuries, patients with meniscus injuries, gait chart joint motor function assessment for patients with osteoarthritis, bone tumors, and femoral head necrosis.

The professors had a lively discussion at the meeting on how to apply the gait map more widely in clinical practice, how to match the gait map with the motor function of joints, specific joint diseases, and the problems and doubts encountered during the application process. It was concluded that starting from the most common knee osteoarthritis, sports injuries and normal people in orthopedics, a large-scale gait map examination will be carried out to form a large database, so as to comprehensively improve the diagnosis and treatment levels of joint motor function evaluation in China.