Task‐Specific Perturbation Training Improves the Recovery Stepping Responses by Women With Knee Osteoarthritis Following Laboratory‐Induced Trips

Trip‐specific training improves the kinematics of trip‐specific compensatory stepping response (CSR) in the laboratory and reduces prospectively measured trip‐related fall‐rate of middle age and older women. We examined whether one session of trip‐specific perturbation training could improve recovery step kinematics in women with knee osteoarthritis (OA), a condition known to increase fall risk. Seventeen women with self‐reported symptomatic knee OA (age 61.1 ± 7.7 years, body mass index [BMI] 29.7 ± 5.9 kg/m²) and 22 control women (age 59.5 ± 6.8 years, BMI 28.4 ± 6.2 kg/m²) completed a brief training protocol consisting of 20 trials of treadmill‐delivered trip‐specific perturbations. We assessed pre‐ and post‐training recovery step length and trunk kinematics at the instant of recovery step completion. Repeated‐measures analysis of variance was used to determine the significance of between‐group differences following the training protocol, and to evaluate the significance of within‐group pre‐to‐post changes in the variables of interest. The group by training interaction effects for step length (p = 0.466), trunk flexion angle (p = 0.751), and trunk angular velocity (p = 0.413) were not significant and the pre‐to‐post changes in step length were not significant (p = 0.286). However, pre‐to‐post trunk flexion angle improved by 26% and 34% in the OA and control groups, respectively (p < 0.001) and trunk flexion angular velocity decreased by 193% in the OA group and by 32% in the control group, respectively (p < 0.001), often reflecting a transition to the direction of extension. The results suggest that trip‐specific training can improve CSR kinematics in women with knee OA. It is important to determine, the effectiveness of trip‐specific training in decreasing trip‐specific fall‐rate by women with knee OA. © 2019 Orthopaedic Research Society. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Orthop Res 38:663–669, 2020