Factors Associated with Prosthetic Knee Buckling during Running in Unilateral Transfemoral Amputees

Abstract

Individuals with limb amputations appear to benefit both physically and psychologically from participation in sports and/or regular physical activity, leading to a healthy lifestyle. However, individuals with unilateral transfemoral amputations （UTFA） have difficulties in preventing falls due to prosthetic knee buckling, defined as the sudden loss of postural support during weight-bearing activities. Despite the risk of prosthetic knee buckling can be evaluated by the prosthetic knee angular impulse （PKAI） during the stance phase, little is known about the factors associated with PKAI in individuals with UTFA. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the demographic factors associated with prosthetic knee buckling risk in runners with UTFA. Fourteen participants with UTFA performed running on a 40-m of runway, where seven force platforms and optical motion capture cameras. We quantified the risk of knee buckling as prosthetic external knee flexion angular impulse, which is the time integral of external knee flexion moment during the stance phase of prosthetic limb. We used the Pearson's correlation coefficients to examine the relationship between the demographic data and risk of knee buckling. Only the body mass and body height had the significant negative correlation with the risk of knee buckling. These results suggest that unilateral transfemoral amputees with a smaller body height and body mass may be exposed to a higher risk of prosthetic knee buckling during running.