Thesis (Ph.D.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Physical Therapy - Department of Basic Science

Background: The importance of human gait analysis from the clinical point of view, lies in the fact that gait disorders affect a high percentage of the world's population. Studies on healthy human gait may be partly because there are some difficulties in evaluating healthy gait patterns; even if walkers have usual walking ability, their walking includes many patterns, which are at least seemingly neutral. Also understanding differences in gait between men and women is important to start discriminating normal sex related patterns from early pathologic changes. The purpose: of this study was to identify the spatio-temporal parameters among different age groups within each gender and to establish the spatio-temporal parameters between normal males and females within the same age groups. Methodology: Five hundred normal subjects (247 males and 253 females), their age ranges from 10 to 50 years were randomly selected. Design of study: One shot study, They were randomly assigned into 4 equal groups (A,B,C and D) with ages from (10-19,20-29,30-39 and 40-50 respectively). Each group consists of normal 125 subject was randomly assigned for measuring spatio-temporal parameters including (cadence, velocity, step time, step length, step width, stride time, stride length, stance time, swing time, single support time and double support time) and were collected barefoot with the Tekscan High Resolution Walkway Mat{u2122}. The results: among different age groups within each gender, there were statistical significant differences among groups (A, B, C, and D) in both males and females in all spatio-temporal parameters

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