Accelerations due to impact at heel strike using below-knee prosthesis.

The acceleration in the sagittal plane of the prosthetic tube at heel strike in normal walking was measured in five healthy amputees with their definitive below-knee prosthesis, every subject using six different prosthetic feet, wearing sport shoes as well as leather shoes. The experiments were carried out in the rehabilitation centre "Het Roessingh", Enschede, The Netherlands. Maximum accelerations were extracted from the acceleration-time-signal. Mean acceleration maxima of all subjects were calculated for each foot-shoe combination to eliminate the individual influence of the subjects. In the axial direction the maximal accelerations demonstrate a clear difference among the prosthetic feet and the shoes, while in dorsoventral (tangential) direction the inter-individual variation in the acceleration extremes dominates the difference between the types of footwear. In comparison with non-amputees the magnitude of the maximal axial acceleration at heel strike does not differ significantly.