This study aimed to investigate the effects of pelvic mobility exercises with real-time biofeedback on the gait performance of DLD patients.
Participants were recruited from the Department of Neurosurgery clinic at the National Taiwan University Hospital. All patients with DLD were diagnosed by the surgeon. Patients underwent 20-minute pelvic mobility exercises with a real-time biofeedback system. Before and after the intervention, participants were asked to perform a 10-meter walk test at a self-selected speed. Gait movements were recorded by OpenCap (v0.3), an open-source, web-based software tool for computing the motion from videos. The videos were captured with two iPhone 14 (iOS ver. 16.0.1, Apple Inc., California, USA). The primary outcomes were spatiotemporal gait parameters. Secondary outcomes included pelvic joint excursions during walking and the visual analog scale (VAS) for pain. Data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics (ver. 27). The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to compare spatiotemporal parameters between pre- and post-intervention. The statistical significance was set at a p-value of less than 0.05.
Eight participants (mean age 67.63 ± 6.67 years) were recruited. After the intervention, stride length was significantly increased (p 0.05), and step duration was significantly decreased (p = 0.05) compared to before the intervention. Furthermore, the pelvic joint excursion was significantly greater (p = 0.05) in the frontal plane during walking, and the pain levels were significantly reduced (p 0.05) compared to pre-intervention. However, other gait parameters, such as cadence, velocity, and double support duration, showed no significant differences between pre- and post-intervention. The improvement in stride length and step duration indicates that the intervention may enhance movement awareness and increase perceived pelvic mobility in DLD patients. These changes likely contributed to the actual improvements in pelvic mobility and pain reduction. As a result, DLD patients were able to take longer steps and spend less time on each step, ultimately leading to improved gait performance.
Pelvic mobility exercises with real-time biofeedback demonstrated efficacy in improving gait parameters in patients with DLD, particularly in increasing stride length and reducing step duration. These findings suggest that this intervention may increase pelvic mobility in DLD patients, enable them to take longer steps and reduce the time spent on each step, potentially contributing to a more efficient and better gait performance.
Pelvic mobility exercises with real-time biofeedback could be an alternative therapeutic option for improving gait in DLD patients in clinical settings.
Real-time biofeedback
Degenerative lumbar disease
