The challenge

According to the Singapore Burden of Disease Study in 2014, Osteoarthritis (OA) is the 5th reason for years of life lost to disability, ill health, or early death.

While lifestyle changes such as losing weight and exercise are prescribed as a first line of defence to take weight off this load-bearing joint, increasing sedentary lifestyles that involve weekend bursts of sports activities mean that hospitals are increasingly diagnosing patients as young as 45 years of age with knee osteoarthritis.

Given that knee implants typically last 10-20 years at most and patients are living longer, such surgery is not recommended in patients below 60-70 years of age. Removing a knee implant causes devastating injury to the remaining tissue and makes further implants impractical.

There is a need, therefore, to diagnose the potential for knee damage before it happens so that preventive treatments may be applied.

The proposed solution

We advocate precision rehabilitation through gait analysis as a key strategy in optimising non-surgical treatment. The aim of the study is to investigate the utility of Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM1D) to identify movement deficiencies in a patient that may lead to knee osteoarthritis in later life, and to recommend an intervention prescription that will delay or negate the need for surgical intervention.