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Purpose of BioMechanics
“What does any of the things you spot or notice on a static or dynamic exam have to do with your patient’s chief complaint, the design or adjustment of their orthotics?
The simple answer is everything!”
The purpose of biomechanics is to be able to assess your patient’s mechanics so as to spot the areas of imbalance or faulty mechanics that they exhibit during gait. Additionally, one uses biomechanics to gauge the efficacy of orthotics and any other conservative modalities including shoe gear.
The biomechanical tools that we use are gross as opposed to the relative minutia that we learned in school. Which hip is higher and which foot pronates more are examples of the gross and obvious things we look for while assessing our patient’s mechanics during the dynamic exam or gait analysis.
In fact, we have broken down gait analysis to the point where you need only look for a few simple things within literally two segments or areas of your patient’s body when observing your patient’s gait.
Likewise, we have developed a very quick and simple static exam that gives us information about angle and base of gait and the relative flexibility that patient has compared right to left. See the “Predicting Orthotic Outcomes” section of this site for more details on the static and dynamic exams that we utilize.
The difference between being completely confident and subsequently obtaining consistently superior results as opposed to being in the position of dispensing a pair of orthotics and “seeing how it goes” lies in the interpretation of what you see on the dynamic and static exams.
For example, what does a pronated left foot and a high right hip mean and how does that relate to my patient’s chief complaint and the design or adjustment of the orthotic?
In fact, what does any of the things you spot or notice on a static or dynamic exam have to do with your patient’s chief complaint and or the design or adjustment of their orthotics? The simple answer is everything!
You put yourself at a severe disadvantage to the degree that you are not comfortable assessing mechanics. Faulty mechanics lies at the bottom of practically everything that we are presented with in practice.
This goes hand and hand with being successful with orthotics. If you can spot an imbalance and can trace it forward to what your patient is complaining about, then you can make an orthotic that can address that specific imbalance.
You become successful with orthotics in general regardless of diagnosis.
The absolute best part about being able to accurately assess your patient’s mechanics is that it allows you to predict orthotic outcomes. You will know beforehand how the orthotics will be able to address (or not) the faulty mechanics that your patient exhibits.
When you can predict your orthotic results, you become very Confident and once you are confident, you will cast and dispense large numbers of orthotics each month.
You learn all you need to interpret these things in our course. Please see the course section of this website for more information.
Biomechanics Confusing?
