A Novel Walking Cane With Haptic Biofeedback Reduces Degenerative Loading in the Arthritic Knee

The most commonly prescribed mobility aid, the walking cane, is often underloaded and therefore fails to reduce knee joint loading and provide symptomatic relief for those with knee osteoarthritis. For this study, a novel walking cane with haptic biofeedback was designed to improve cane loading. The purpose of this study was twofold; 1) to determine the effectiveness of a novel walking haptic biofeedback cane to encourage proper cane loading compared with a conventional cane, and 2) to determine whether scale training or haptic feedback influences short term retention of cane loading. It is hypothesized that haptic biofeedback would increase cane loading (H1) and decrease knee loading (peak knee adduction moment (H2) and knee adduction angular impulse (H3)) when compared to naïve cane use.