Retro-walking in Knee Osteoarthritis

Knee osteoarthritis causes chronic disability in the older population worldwide. Its prevalence increases dramatically with age. Prevalence of radiographic osteoarthritis is estimated at 80 % of all adults at or over the age of 65 years. The common impairments such as knee pain, decreased functional mobility, quadriceps strength, and stiffness leading to physical disability have been associated with knee osteoarthritis .

The prevalence of osteoarthritis is gradually in- creasing in both low- and high-income countries.The Global Burden of Disease studies recently indicated that knee osteoarthritis is the fastest increasing major health dis- order and the second global cause of disability. In the lower extremity, the knee is often affected, and knee osteoarthritis results in significant mobility restrictions and a substantial financial burden. The risk of osteoarthritis associated disability is equal to that of cardiac disorders and more common than any other medical problem in older populations. The common clinical manifestations of knee osteoarthritis include pain, stiffness, joint enlargement, crepitus, muscle weakness, deformity, impaired proprioception, reduced joint motion, and disability. Therapeutic exercises are often used to improve physiological impairments such as reduced joint motion, muscle weakness, impaired balance, disability, and proprioception.

Forward walking provides an increased opportunity to train the entire gait cycle, facilitating an enhanced gait pattern in children with cerebral palsy. Backward walking is recommended to improve the components of forward walking in those children. Hoog kamer et al. reported that backward walking uses the same rhythm circuitry of forward walking, but additionally requires specialized control circuits. Gait rehabilitation with backward walking puts emphasis on positioning the foot behind the body and, thus, facilitates hip extension while performing a knee flexion that can be useful for patients who have synergistic influences in the lower extremity. A longer period of muscles activity of the legs during backward walking training can result in greater muscle strength gain as compared with for- ward walking training. Furthermore, training in backward walking could require higher physiological and perceptual responses than forward walking at matched speed, as backward walking is the performance of a novel task for most children with cerebral palsy.

Among the current possible gait training methods, backward walking has emerged as an important therapy. Backward walking is regulated by the same central pattern generator as forward walking. Unlike forward walking, backward walking has no heel contact in the early stance phase and thus leads to lower compression force at the patella femoral joint and decreased force absorption at the knee joint. In addition, lower limb muscle activity during backward walking is intensified on account of the higher recruitment of motor units. During the loading response phase of backward walking, the ground reaction force rapidly increases to support the weight of the entire body. The absence of visual cues during backward walking results in increased spatial and smaller temporal gait parameters. Therefore, backward walking can be considered as a treatment strategy to improve gait.

Many pharmacological treatment strategies may improve disease-related impairments; however, have limited impact on gait. In recent years, backward walking has become an attractive alternative for training and rehabilitation purposes to improve mobility. For individuals with stroke, both over ground and treadmill backward walking training has been affective to improve walking speed, stride length , gait asymmetry, gait cycle phases, functional capacity and balance. Similarly, in children with cerebral palsy, Backward Walking treadmill training improved gait speed, step length, Stride Length and functional capacity and the addition of over ground Backward Walking to a traditional physical therapy program improved overall postural instability.

To our knowledge, there is a lack of studies has evaluated the Effects of Retro-walking on pain, functional disability and performance in knee osteoarthritis. Investigator developed a program to apply retro-walking to Osteoarthritic patients. Repetition of movements will be added to program. This program is design to improve knee performance, functional ability \& reduce pain. The purpose of the present study is to examine the efficiency of retro-walking to improve functional disability and performance and reduce pain in patients with osteoarthritis.

Investigator predict that retro-walking will improve performance, functional disability \& pain in patients with knee osteoarthritis; they will enhance their performance, movement as well as functional abilities. Also so there is awareness in community for the efficacy of neurodevelopmental therapy for the management in Down syndrome infants.