Influence of sensorial information on static balance of community-dwelling elderly: a comparison regarding the history of falling.

Natalia Aquaroni Ricci
Gerontologia - UNICAMP

* Daniele Faria Figueiredo Gon?alves
UNICAMP

*Arlete Maria Valente Coimbra
UNICAMP

*Ibsen Bellini Coimbra
UNICAMP

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     Last modified: February 25, 2007

Abstract
The processing of postural control starts with the environment and body communication, through sensorial systems. Because of the ageing, these systems are affected by the functional decrease and/or diseases, predisposing the elderly to instability and falls. Objective: This work is aimed at analyzing the influence of sensorial information in the elderly?s static balance comparing them in groups, according to the report of falls (without fall, one fall and recurrent falls) in the last year. Method: A cross-sectional descriptive comparative research. The sample was composed by community-dwelling elderly. Each group was reduced to 32 subjects by gender and age filter. The balance was evaluated by CTSIB, which analyzes the stability maintenance capacity according to six sensorial conflicts conditions. The descriptive and inferential analysis was accomplished by means of the tests: Qui-squared, ANOVA and T-Test; with significance level of 5%. Results: There was a larger number of CTSIB abnormal cases for the Group of recurrent falls in comparison to the Group without falls in the conditions 4 (p=0.012) and 5 (p=0.017); and to the Group of one fall in the condition 4 (p=0.052). As for the time performance, the Group of recurrent falls remained less time than the Group without falls in the conditions 4 (p=0.043), 5 (p=0.042) and 6 (p=0.052). In relation to the CTSIB progression, the Groups without falls, and one fall presented less time from the condition 4 to 5 (p=0.016 and p=0.012, respectively); and the Group of recurrent falls had a worse performance from the condition 1 to 2 (p=0.039) and from the condition 4 to 5 (p=0.001). Conclusion: The results showed that the sensorial interaction in the elderly varies according to the history of falling. They also revealed that there is a larger dependence on the visual and somatosensory systems for the Group of recurrent falls. In this way, it is possible to guide the rehabilitation process and prevention with training and/or compensation of deficient strategies and decrease the sensorial dependence.