Protocol for the Functional Evaluation of Patients with Knee Injury Treated in a Local Rehabilitation Centre

Abstract

The pathologies and injuries of the knee are a common problem in the clinical field. There are numerous tests that allow to evaluate in a standardized way the results of the rehabilitation, nevertheless in the medical center where the present work was developed, the evaluation was carried out by treating clinicians without following protocolized and documented criteria. For this reason, a protocol was developed that consisted of a first part that uses the IKDC test and a conventional videographic method to obtain spatio-temporal parameters. The protocol was applied for six patients attending the rehabilitation centre, the indices proposed by the IKDC test and the spatio-temporal parameters were calculated: step time, stance time, cadence and symmetry. It was concluded that the IKDC test provided useful information that allowed recording the evolution in the rehabilitation, to document it, and to complement the patient’s clinical history. Spatio-temporal parameters, on the other hand, did not provide more information for the patients studied. However, the information provided by these parameters contributed tools to quantify the qualitative observations made in patients by treating physicians. Finally, a survey was carried out to the personnel of the institution to evaluate the proposed protocol, which resulted in the decision to implement it routinely for the assessment of the patients of the institution.