Which is better, walking frame or cane ?

Which is better, walking frame or cane?

There are certain differences between a walker and a cane. For people with inconvenient legs and feet, is it better to choose a walker or a cane?

 1. Advantages and Disadvantages of Walkers

Compared with crutches, walkers have a more complex structure, more supporting legs, and a larger supporting area. Therefore, walkers can provide more stable support than crutches, which helps patients walk. Compared with crutches, walkers' advantage is that it can reduce the weight of the patient's legs and improve the patient's walking ability, but walkers' disadvantage is that the walking speed of the walker is slow. Although walkers is effective on flat ground, it is inconvenient to go up and down stairs. In addition, the size and structure of the walker are larger and more complex than those of crutches.

 2. Advantages and disadvantages of crutches

Compared with walkers, crutches rely on the strong muscle groups of the chest, abdomen, shoulder girdle, and arms to provide support. They can provide strong power, but the stability is average and the patient's balance ability is required to be high. The advantage of crutches is that they are flexible and fast, and can provide a strong movement speed. A strong person can even move at an extraordinary speed with the support of crutches, and the hands and arms can be freed after stopping. The disadvantage of crutches is that they have poor stability and can cause compression damage to the axillary nerve (if used improperly).

  It can be seen that walkers and crutches each have their own advantages, and it is not necessarily clear which one is better. The choice mainly depends on the patient's condition: even if the bottom of a crutch is designed with multiple support points, the crutch still only has unilateral support, that is, it can only support one side of the body. It is suitable for the elderly with good physical strength and leg strength or patients with unilateral weakness (such as unilateral stroke or trauma). Walkers are "N"-shaped support frames, suitable for the lower body with weaker, such as the elderly or patients who have undergone major surgery such as joint replacement.