Standing pressure distribution for normal and below-knee amputee children.

Below-knee (BK) amputee children have a different morphology from normal children and amputees may thus have atypical limb loading during standing. The purpose of this investigation was to examine differences in standing ground-shoe pressure distribution between BK and normal children. A pressure plate was used to measure the ground-shoe weight distribution of three BK children and ten normal children during standing. Results indicated that the weight distribution between prosthetic and non-prosthetic limbs of BK children was not significantly different from the feet of normal children. The anterior-posterior weight distribution for the prosthetic and non-prosthetic feet was significantly different from that of the normal children. Further quantification of weight distribution and analysis of more subjects is necessary to determine the benefits, detriments, or irrelevance of these results.