COMPARISON OF STATIC BALANCE BETWEEN INSTITUTIONALIZED AND COMMUNITY-DWELLING OLDER ADULTS

摘要

Falls are common among older people and are a serious public health problem in this population. Studies indicate that about 30% of people over 65 years who live in the community fall annually. For individuals in nursing homes, 50–66% fall each year. One specific condition for risk of falling is the gait/balance disability. Often, institutionalized older patients have fewer opportunities to independently participate in activities and tasks of daily living, having higher deleterious effects in the physiological losses from aging, compromising gait and balance. There are fewer studies showing the balance by a force platform in institutionalized elderly. The aim of the study was compare the static balance between institutionalized and community-dwelling older. Forty two older volunteers participated in the study (21 community-dwelling and 21 institutionalized). The static balance was assessed using a force platform (eyes open and closed base). The parameters used to measure the subject’s stability were: total path length (cm), mean velocity (cm/s) and 95% of the ellipse area (cm²). The age of participants was 75.4 ± 7.3 for institutionalized and 72.5 ± 7.1 for community-dwelling older (p=0.20). The results showed a significant difference between institutionalized and community-dwelling older: total path length (77.9 ± 25.05 and 52.7 ± 12.59, p=0.0002), mean velocity (2.60 ± 0.84 and 1.88 ± 0.86, p=0.001) and 95% of the ellipse area (6.5 ± 3.3 and 4.6 ± 2.4, p=0.04). The results showed that the static balance assessed by a force platform of institutionalized older is significantly different of community-dwelling elderly, explaining the greater risk of falls of this population.