fourleg.com

Hi Laurie

I'm a vet slowly trying to get my head around rehab.
Your website is great. So much helpful information that I am really unable to find elsewhere.
I've been using manual therapies + acupuncture for 3-4 years now as a housecall practice.
I'm now considering setting up a bricks and mortar practice.
I would really like to quantify what I do and was considering eventually utilising a gait analysis platform.
Do you have one? Had you considered getting one?

Benefits I see are- it's a machine that goes beep that can impress clients (I was maybe planning on having it in reception and getting the receptionist to do the analysis pre and maybe post consult)
- helpful diagnostic tool
- helpful monitoring tool
- I could use it in small scale studies if I ever get the time.
I have so many more tools now for helping musculoskeletal issues I would like to know in my hands which treatments are helping the most.

All pie in the sky stuff at the moment but you have to move forward.

I'd be interested to know your thoughts on this.

Thanks

S.

Hi S.,

Apologies for my tardy reply. I’m delighted that you are finding the platform so handy (could I used your first two lines as a testimonial?)

Okay… so on to the question.
I have a Stance Analyzer - static weight bearing. We quite like it for the post-ops as a way to show the owners what’s going on, to quantify what we are ‘seeing’ or ‘thinking’, and to provide objective outcomes to referring vets.
For this purpose, I think it works very well.

Compared to the gait analysis programs / platforms etc, it’s also very user friendly, compact, and much easier on the pocket book!

I have only had fleeting interest in obtaining a full gait analysis system. As a clinician, I don’t see it as practical.
What I do think could be a way to TEST DRIVE the usefulness, interest, and bang-for-your-buck-ness (new term, just created, feel free to use at will), would be to get the App - Coach’s Eye. On the app, you can video a dog walking, and mark on the screen the level of the head or rump, foot fall, leg reach angle, topline, etc. Now, if you mark your floor, and the wall behind with systematically measured points - you can then use the pictures to put numerical values to the things you are seeing. It would also work for static pictures as below. If I know that between each line is 15 cm, then I can blow up the picture, measure the distance from line to line on my screen, then measure the distance between front and rear legs (or strides or whatever), I can then do some basic math and know the distance between the two ‘objects’ in real life.

Maybe that sounds a bit too Fred Flintstone! However, if the alternative is to shell out $40,000.00 USD to see if you might use it (and let it do the calculating for you), you might as well see if the data is truly of value!

For my clinic and what we are seeing and doing. It’s not! Not at that price.

Ah! And while it’s in my head… if you wanted to do a test drive for something like the Stance Analyzer, you could use the 4 Bathroom Scales method - place the dog with each foot on a bathroom scale, then record the actual weight on each. (Sounds like a magic trick to be able to get the dog to stand still, not shift AND record all 4 scales a the same time… but it’s actually been validated! Crazy!) Ah, just found the study - they only used two bathroom scales (I admit, I’m a little disillusioned now. I jest. But it’s in the literature as valid!!) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22828919

Then I’ll throw a wrench into the pile. When we did our Sporting Dog Baseline Assessment Day, we did limb circumference, infrared thermography, gait analysis, profile analysis, stance analyzer, balance tests, and then the dogs went to the therapists for full body evaluation. What we found out was the the therapists hands picked up everything that the other measures had found. More importantly, the therapist’s hands were the only thing that could interpret and make sense of what the other measures found. (i.e. offloading the RF leg, hotter area on IRT at RF shoulder region, ever so slight head bob with RF on gait analysis & therapist found signs of medial shoulder instability.) When it boils down to it… what’s more important? If I had all the bells and whistles of ‘objective outcome measures’ but crappy hands and physical evaluation skills… I’d be at a loss. (So, not to say, don’t do any objective outcome measures, but rather, when it comes to clinical practice, I’ve rather invest time and money into skills versus tools.)

Feeling like I’m writing a essay:

In Conclusion,
Hands are better diagnostic tools.
Start simple by doing a test drive with less costly or cumbersome equipment.
Ask yourself if you are happy with and can live with the simple tool and stick with it.
If you want to purchase, this author suggests starting with a stance analyzer.
If you’ve got money flowing from orifices you didn’t even know existed and need a tax write off, go ahead and buy a big guns gait analysis platform.

I hope that provides you with some food for though and a wee bit of entertainment as well!

Have a great week!

Cheers,

Laurie