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Stability of daily home-based measures of postural control over an 8-week period in highly functioning older adults

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Abstract

Purpose

The focus of this study was to monitor daily objective measures of standing postural control over an 8-week period, recorded in a person’s home, in a population of healthy older adults. Establishing natural patterns of variation in the day-to-day signal, occurring in the relative absence of functional decline or disease, would enable us to determine thresholds for changes in postural control from baseline that could be considered clinically important.

Methods

Eighteen community-dwelling older adults (3 M, 15 F, 72 ± 6 years) participated in a home-based trial where each day they were asked to complete a technology-enabled routine consisting of a short questionnaire, as well as a quiet standing balance trial. Centre of pressure (COP) excursions were calculated over the course of each daily balance trial to generate variables such as postural sway length and mean sway frequency.

Results

The data demonstrated large differences between subjects in centre of pressure measures (coefficients of variation ranging 37–107 %, depending on the variable). Each participant also exhibited variations in their day-to-day trials (e.g. coefficients of variation across 8 weeks ranging ~17–56 %, within person for mean COP distance). Inter- and intra-subject differences were not strongly related to functional tests, suggesting that these variations were not necessarily aberrant movement patterns, but are seemingly representative of natural movement variability.

Conclusions

The idea of applying a group-focused approach at an individual level may result in misclassifying important changes for a particular individual. Early detection of deterioration can only be achieved through the creation of individual trajectories for each person, that are inherently self referential.

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Abbreviations

BBS:

Berg Balance Scale

COP:

Centre of pressure

ICC:

Intra-class coefficient

MDC:

Minimal detectable change

SEM:

Standard error of measurement

TUG:

Timed-up-and-Go

WBB:

Wii balance board

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Acknowledgments

This research was completed as part of a wider programme of research within the TRIL Centre (Technology Research for Independent Living). The TRIL Centre is a multidisciplinary research centre, bringing together researchers from UCD, TCD, NUIG & Intel, funded by Intel, GE and IDA Ireland.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Technology Research for Independent Living (TRIL), University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Denise McGrath, Barry R. Greene, Katie Sheehan, Lorcan Walsh & Brian Caulfield

  2. School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Population Science, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Denise McGrath & Brian Caulfield

  3. Kinesis Health Technologies, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Barry R. Greene

  4. Vancouver Coastal Health, Vancouver General Hospital, Vancouver, Canada

    Katie Sheehan

  5. The Centre for Affective Solutions for Ambient Living Awareness (CASALA), Dundalk Institute of Technology, Dundalk, Ireland

    Lorcan Walsh

  6. Department Medical Gerontology, Trinity College Dublin and the Falls and Blackout Unit at St James’s Hospital, Dublin, Ireland

    Rose A. Kenny

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  1. Denise McGrath
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  2. Barry R. Greene
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  3. Katie Sheehan
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  4. Lorcan Walsh
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Denise McGrath.

Additional information

Communicated by Dick F. Stegeman.

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McGrath, D., Greene, B.R., Sheehan, K. et al. Stability of daily home-based measures of postural control over an 8-week period in highly functioning older adults. Eur J Appl Physiol 115, 437–449 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-014-3034-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-014-3034-3

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