A portable monitoring system for measuring weight-bearing during tibial fracture healing

An ambulatory monitoring system has been developed to measure the weight-bearing achieved by a patient on their fractured leg. The system is lightweight, portable, and can monitor weight-bearing continuously over an extended period of time. In addition to mean weight-bearing, the system can also determine temporal parameters associated with the patients' gait. This system was used to measure the weight-bearing achieved during the course of fracture healing in a small number of patients being treated by a variety of fixation methods for a tibial fracture. In general, weight-bearing was observed to increase with time post fracture, and the fixation method employed appeared to influence the rate of increase of loading of the fractured limb, more rigid methods of fixation enabling full-weight-bearing to be achieved sooner. (C) 1998 IPEM. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.