A review of observational gait assessment in clinical practice

For physical therapists observational gait assessment is preferable to instrumented gait assessment in the clinical setting. Existing observational gait assessment tools used in clinical practice were reviewed in terms of their validity, repeatability, sensitivity, and specificity. Most gait assessment tools lacked information concerning their validity or repeatability. In addition, most gait assessment tools had not had their sensitivity and specificity adequately evaluated. Current approaches to the development and use of observational gait assessment tools have been characterised by a top down approach, designing what is useful without any understanding of the appropriateness of a tool's content, construction, and so forth. We would advocate a more structured approach, by assessing gait using the gold standard of instrumented gait analysis and designing an observational gait assessment tool based on the data.