Prevalence Of Outward Deviation Of Feet In Human Gait: A Non-Participant Observation

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Physiotherapists have been trained to possess unique superspeciality potential to conduct biomechanical analyses by visual observations and decode the kinetics of various static and dynamic postures. This distinct skill of Physiotherapists enables them to make accurate clinical diagnosis with credible rationale in many occasions without even the support of any specialized equipment. Additionally, apart from the ability to directly examine the patients elaborately in the clinical settings, Physiotherapists are also inherently capable of Non-participant observation to endlessly upgrade their knowledge and interpretation skills by just visually observing various movement patterns in sports, household activities, occupational tasks etc. Gait is one of the commonly seen dynamic postures which can also be analysed to certain extent using Non-participation observation method. The determination to research the alignment of feet in human gait developed after noticing the prevalence of walking with Outward Deviation of Feet (ODF) among various individuals in public spaces. Methodology: Non-participant visual observation of the ODF was carried out in various public spaces like roads, railways stations, streets, fitness clubs etc. Additionally, the walking patterns of people of other countries were also searched in social media like YouTube. Both anterior view and posterior view of the gait of the individuals were observed and possible biomechanical interpretations were made for the development of new theories and research pathways. Results: Large number of children were found consistently aligning their feet straight except few sporadically. Walking with ODF was found frequent among many adolescents, middle age adults and older adults. Conclusion: Taking into account of the increased foot progression angle and narrowed step width, ODF should be viewed as a potential biomechanical problem that would probably be acquired from the adolescence (or even before the adolescence) as one of the earliest asymptomatic biomechanical dysfunctions of unhealthy ageing.