VIDEO ASSESSMENT OF REARFOOT MOVEMENTS DURING WALKING - A RELIABILITYSTUDY

Objective: Rearfoot motion, particularly rearfoot pronation, has been associated with many foot and leg pathologies. The assessment of abnor mal rearfoot pronation frequently involves the use of video assessment in both clinical and research settings, but the reliability of this a ssessment has not been addressed. Design: In this study, 14 participan ts were videotaped during walking. Five clinicians individually viewed the recordings on two separate occasions and assessed whether the par ticipant's rearfoot motion was abnormal. Setting: University Gait Anal ysis Laboratory. Patients or Other Participants: Patients from the uni versity's podiatry clinic were assessed for rearfoot motion by five ex perienced clinicians. Intervention: Because this was a reliability stu dy, no intervention was undertaken. Main Outcome Measures: Clinicians were asked to assess the videotape of the patients walking and indicat e on a 5-point scale if they considered the person to be abnormally pr onating. Retest and intertester results were compared. Results: The re sults indicated that there was poor intertester agreement (kappa = .19 ). Retest agreement, while slightly higher, varied from poor to fair ( kappa = -.12 to kappa = .59). Conclusions: Although video recordings h ave been thought to enhance reliability of assessment of rearfoot mori on, the results indicated that the exclusive use of video recordings i n the assessment of motion of the rearfoot was not reliable. (C) 1996 by the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine and the American A cademy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation