Can AI help patients with bone fractures?

Integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) with gait analysis can greatly improve treatments for people with fractures, suggests a study on Wednesday.

Gait analysis can help doctors gauge how an individual stands and walks, especially in the case of a fracture.

The study showed a significant association between the rates of hospital readmission after fracture surgery and the presence of underlying medical conditions.

Together with AI, early gait analysis can be key in providing insights into the injury’s impact on locomotion and recovery which can help personalise and improve rehabilitation strategies.

Using AI can help predict “post-injury complications such as infection, malunion, or hardware irritation among individuals with lower extremity fractures”, said the researchers in the paper, published in the Journal of Orthopaedic Research.

The findings “demonstrate the profound impact that integrating machine learning and gait analysis into orthopaedic practice can have, not only in improving the accuracy of post-injury complication predictions but also in tailoring rehabilitation strategies to individual patient needs,” said corresponding author Mostafa Rezapour, of Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

The personalised approach “is a step forward in our quest to optimise rehabilitation strategies, reduce recovery times, and improve overall quality of life for patients with lower extremity fractures,” Rezapour said.