POSTOPERATIVE MOBILITY OF TRAUMATIZED GERIATRIC PATIENTS: A PILOT STUDY USING ACTIBELT TECHNOLOGY

Capturing objective data of the postoperative changes in the mobility of patients is expected to generate a better understanding of the effect of postoperative treatment. Until recently, the collection of gait-related data was limited to controlled clinical environments. The emergence of accurate wearable accelerometers with sufficient runtime, however, enables the long-term measurement and extraction of mobility parameters, such as “real-world walking speed”. An interim analysis of 1967 hours of actibelt data (3D accelerometer, 100 Hz) from 5 patients (planned total 20) with a femur fracture and 5 patients (planned total 20) with a humerus fracture from a geriatric population at two different sites of the university hospital of the Ludwigs-Maximilian-University in Munich was performed. Mobility data was captured during several days of stationary treatment starting directly after surgery and during a short follow-up visit six weeks after the surgery. Preliminary results show an increase of the mean walkin...