An instrumented crutch for monitoring patients’ weight distribution during orthopaedic rehabilitation

AbstractThis paper discusses an instrumented forearm crutch that has been developed to monitor a patient’s weight bearing over the full period of their recovery, and that can potentially be used in a home environment. The crutch measures the applied weight, crutch tilt, and hand position on the grip. Data are transmitted wirelessly to a remote computer, where they are processed and visualized in LabVIEW. The results obtained from a successful pilot study highlight both the need for such an instrumented crutch and its ability to measure the weight being applied through a patient’s lower limb