Motion Analysis Center is a Rarity in the Intermountain West

Kristen Carroll:

Not every Shrines Hospital has a Gait Lab, and certainly not every hospital.

Bruce MacWilliams:

The Shriners Hospitals for Salt Lake City Movement Analysis Laboratory is one of just currently nine accredited laboratories in the United States. 

Kristen Carroll:

The Gait Lab gives you a very moment by moment analysis of how the child's muscle and skeleton is functioning as they move through space.

Bruce MacWilliams:

We put instruments on the body, on certain landmarks, reflective markers, and also electrodes. And there are cameras around the room, which look at the markers as the child walks. And then we are able to distill that information, using a computer model to look at what the hips, the knees, and the ankles, as well as different segments are doing when the child walks. We take that information and then we compare it to children who don't have any problems. And we can understand where the deviations are.

Kristen Carroll:

And this specialized amount of analysis that the Gait Lab can give us, gives us much better recommendations for surgery, making our surgery outcomes far more superior than if we didn't have that skill, as well as it helps us with physical therapy recommendations, helping us know where a child is weak, where they're strong, where they're tight. All those things help us make very specialized and individualized care for each child based on their Gait Lab analysis. 

Kathia Arreaga:

He's aware of why he's coming. I mean, we talk about that he has, I mean, why we going to Shriners? And we have done Gait Labs that has helped us. They told us that he was going to be in a wheelchair, I mean, for the rest of his life, because he was losing his mobility. But because all the help and the surgeries, and everything that we have done, he's definitely defying the odds. And he's walking and he's thriving. He's doing great. Everything is started with Shriners, with the first surgery, and here we are four years later,