USING POSTUROGRAPHY IN A PRACTICE-BASED SETTING TO INVESTIGATE THE EFFECT OF SACCADES IN HEALTHY SUBJECTS

摘要

Eye movements such as saccades are utilized in therapeutic strategies in clinical settings within psychiatry, psychology, vestibular therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy and chiropractic. Attempts have been made to measure the relationship between saccades and postural stability within laboratory conditions. Conflicting information exists as to whether healthy subjects have decreased or increased postural stability during saccades compared to unhealthy subjects. Few practice-based saccade/postural stability study designs have been developed to gather normative data from healthy subjects. In this study, a robust, portable clinical study design that could statistically withstand variability across a range of practice-based clinical settings (including location and tester) was developed allowing changes in subject postural stability data to be grouped and analyzed over those settings. This is the first step for using such a design within a Practice-Based Research Network (PBRN) Randomized Clinical Trial (RCT) methodology to assess the outcomes of saccade-based therapeutic strategies on postural stability in non-healthy cohorts. The results of this investigation show that it is possible to develop a robust clinical design to test the effect of saccades on postural stability that can be used across a range of practice-based settings. The impact of the instrument portability, robustness and sensitivity, of the pre-study tester training (adhering to data retrieval methodology and subject recruitment criteria), and of the environmental variability within location settings should not be under-estimated when designing a practice-based clinical study to guarantee data reliability and validity.