Correlation between gait speed and severity of knee osteoarthritis in a Nigerian population

Abstract

Context: The prevalence of knee osteoarthritis (OA) is rising in Nigeria. Since X-ray imaging is often unavailable in rural areas, clinicians may rely on functional assessments like gait speed to evaluate disease severity.

Objective: To determine the association between Kellgren and Lawrence (K & L) grades 3 and 4 severity of knee Osteoarthritis and gait speed amongst patients seen at University of Benin Teaching Hospital.

Materials and Methods: This was a 12 month hospital based descriptive cross sectional study carried out on 56 adult patients with K & L 3 and 4 Knee OA in the University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH). Participants were requested to walk a distance of 5 metres as fast as possible and safely (without the use of any walking aid) without running, after 15 minutes of rest. Timing was recorded with a stopwatch. This was repeated once and gait speed was measured using metre per seconds as an average of the two performances. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 22.

Results: K&L grade 3 knee OA was present in 60.7 %( n= 34) of participants, while 39.3% (n = 22) presented with K&L grade 4 knee OA. A statistically significant inverse association was observed between gait speed and knee OA severity (p=0.001). Mean gait speed was 1.09±0.18m/s for grade 3 subjects with most ranging between 1.0 and 1.5m/s. Conversely, mean gait speed for grade 4 subjects was 0.75±0.19m/s, with the majority falling below 1.0m/s.

Conclusions: Gait speed is inversely associated with the K & L grades of Knee OA severity in the Nigerian population. Thus, measuring gait speed provides a simple tool to grade advanced disease severity and facilitate early specialist referrals in resource –limited settings.