Dustan Lang
BScPT, GCOMT, Cert Sport Physiotherapy, FAFS,
Physiotherapist
An NHL prospect was referred to my clinic by his professional hockey team following a left ACL tear and repair this past spring. During his rehab, I had concerns regarding the lack of frontal movement in his left hip during an anterior lunge. The reason for my concern is this movement deficit would place excessive stress on his newly reconstructed knee, especially with the demands imposed during a hockey stride.I decided to use Kinetisense during my assessment and treatment for a couple reasons.
- Kinetisense provides visual feedback for the patient and clinician in real-time. This leads to a better understanding of the impairment present and validation of my proposed treatment technique. At first, my patient could not visually see the motion that I was trying to produce during the stride analysis. The real-time assessment with easy to read numbers and axis allowed him to visually see the hip tilt in the frontal plane. This allowed for great patient engagement and education in the rehab process.
- It objectively measures frontal plane movement of his left hip. I don’t know how I could measure this by any other means, especially in realt-time.
The pictures illustrate the lack of frontal plane movement in his left hip during an anterior lunge. As you can see in the pictures I then utilized a manual therapy technique increasing hip adduction in the frontal plane. KInetisense then objectively measured the improvements made during the treatment session. I could then show my patient the objective changes that my rehab techniques had made.
Kinetisense was an essential component during this athlete’s rehab. It greatly assisted in my patient’s understanding of the deficit present consequently leading to patient compliance. Kinetisense also objectively measured a movement that traditionally was very difficult to accurately assess.
