Improvement of the gait deviation index for spinal cord injury to broaden its applicability: the reduced gait deviation index for spinal cord injury (rSCI-GDI)

The SCI-GDI is a tool used to assess how someone with a spinal cord injury walks, but it needs special equipment to measure movements accurately. This study created a new version, the rSCI-GDI, that uses fewer measurements and can be used with simpler equipment, making it easier to assess walking in different situations. The rSCI-GDI focuses on key movements like hip, knee, and ankle motion, and it works just as well as the original SCI-GDI for understanding how someone with a spinal cord injury walks.

• 1
  The reduced SCI-GDI (rSCI-GDI) effectively represents gait variability of adults with SCI as does the SCI-GDI.
• 2
  Pelvic movements, hip rotation, and foot progression angle introduce high variability to the dataset of gait patterns of the adult population with SCI, but they have low relevance to characterize gait kinematics of this population.
• 3
  The rSCI-GDI presents equivalent or stronger correlation coefficients with most of the clinical tests evaluated when compared to the SCI-GDI.