Rumiana Tasheva
Physical Therapy Department, National Sports Academy “Vassil Levskyâ€- Sofia, Bulgaria
Title: Comparison of the results of the Chijin index and the iSTEP tensometric platform
Biography
Biography: Rumiana Tasheva
Abstract
Introduction: There are scarce publications on the study of the feet in health subjects and the lack of such data in children [1, 2, 3, 4, and 5]. Changes in the foot cause dysfunctions in the lower limbs, the pelvis and the spine, which necessitates their timely examination as early as childhood.
The purpose of this study was to an examination of the foot of children in primary school classes by putting into practice a tensometric platform and comparing the results with the data from Chijin's method. Participants: In the period May-October 2017, 104 children from the primary classes in secondary school at the average age of 8, 66 years were examined. Methods: The Chijin's Index was measured in cm and calculated in four degrees: normal foot, tendency to flatfoot, flatfoot, and deep flatfoot. The tensometric ISTEP 5000 (USA) platform was calibrated to the anthropometric data for the current children’s age and showed a 3-D image of the child's feet and provided results for the height of the arch in three levels: low arch; middle arch; high arch. Results: A Gamma coefficient of the ordinal correlation was used to process the data. Results demonstrated statistically significant dependency (а < 0,05, p = 0,000) between two methods with value -,615 on the left foot and value -,775 on the right foot. Conclusions: The results showed a statistically significant correlation between the two methods. On the one hand, this confirmed that the Chinzin index was indicative of the presence of a flat foot, as well as the platform for the establishment of a low arch in children. On the other hand, the two methods have different specificities, as the tensometric platform provides information on the height of the arch with the simultaneous loading of the two lower limbs.