In the realm of complex surgeries like single-event multi-level surgeries, the fundamental question arises: should our focus lie in correcting the patient’s gait pattern or restoring the femoral geometry to a perceived ‘normal’? Understanding that loading patterns on bones significantly influence their development, our team investigated the impact of these parameters on the asymmetry of hip joint loading.

As the loading on the bones is crucial for their further development, we performed musculoskeletal simulations to identify the impact of both parameters on the asymmetry of the hip joint loading. Our findings demonstrate that the gait pattern is the main contributor to asymmetric hip joint loads in healthy children and children with cerebral palsy. The gained insights from our study highlight that the main focus of clinical interventions should be to normalizing the gait pattern and therefore the hip joint loading to avoid the development of femoral deformities.

We invite you to explore the full paper published in PLOS ONE to dive deeper into this research topic.

• Koller W., Baca A., Kainz H. (2023) The gait pattern and not the femoral morphology is the main contributor to asymmetric hip joint loading. PLoS ONE, 18(9): e0291789. 
  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291789