Knee osteoarthritis, degenerative meniscal lesion and osteonecrosis of the knee: Can a simple gait test direct us to a better clinical diagnosis?

Introduction The purpose of the current study was to compare the gait patterns in patients with three differing knee pathologies – knee osteoarthritis (OA), degenerative meniscal lesion (DML) and spontaneous osteonecrosis of the knee (SONK) and a group of healthy controls. Hypothesis A simple gait test will detect differences between different knee pathologies. Material and methods Forty-seven patients with bilateral knee OA, 47 patients with DML, 28 patients with SONK and 27 healthy controls were included in this analysis. Patients underwent a spatiotemporal gait assessment and were asked to complete the Western Ontario and McMaster university (WOMAC) Index and the Short-Form (SF)-36 Health Survey. Anova tests, followed by Bonferroni multiple comparison tests and the Chi² tests were performed for continuous and categorical variables, respectively. Results Significant differences were found for all gait measures and clinical questionnaires between healthy controls and all knee conditions. Patients with SONK differed from patients with bilateral knee OA and DML in all gait measures and clinical questionnaires, except for WOMAC subscales. There were no significant differences between patients with bilateral knee OA and patients with DML. Symmetry was also examined and revealed asymmetry in some gait parameters in patients with SONK and DML. Discussion Based on the differences in gait parameters that were found in the current study, adding an objective functional spatiotemporal gait test may assist in the diagnostic process of knee pathologies. Type of study Case Control Study Level III.