Office Assessment of Gait and Station

ABSTRACT

Gait and station disorders are among the most common reasons patients seek outpatient neurologic consultation. A careful assessment of gait and station provides the clinician with an overview of the integrity of a patient's central and peripheral nervous systems. Therefore, clinicians may consider performing a gait and station examination as the prelude to their formal neurologic examination of the patient, regardless of their chief complaint, to gain insight into which areas of the remainder of the neurologic examination they should particularly focus on, to localize the patient's neurologic dysfunction. In this review, the author describes how a structured gait and station examination may be performed in the ambulatory setting, without any special equipment. Then, the precise mechanics of each component of normal gait and station are discussed, so that the potential localizations and significance of abnormalities, which may occur during various phases of the gait cycle, can be highlighted. In particular, some less common findings are emphasized, which may be mistaken as psychogenic in etiology.

KEYWORDS

Gait disorders - parkinsonism - normal pressure hydrocephalus - psychogenic gait disorders

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