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Can a single session of treadmill-based slip training reduce daily life falls in community-dwelling older adults? A randomized controlled trial

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Abstract

Background

Task-specific training with single-session overground slip simulation has shown to reduce real-life falls in older adults.

Aims

The purpose of this study was to determine if fall-resisting behavior acquired from a single-session treadmill-based gait slip training could be retained to reduce older adults’ falls in everyday living over a 6-month follow-up period.

Methods

143 community-dwelling older adults (≥ 65 years old) were randomly assigned to either the treadmill-based gait slip training group (N = 73), in which participants were exposed to 40 unpredictable treadmill slips, or the control group (N = 70), in which participants walked on a treadmill at their comfortable speed. Participants reported their falls from the preceding year (through self-report history) and over the following 6 months (through fall diaries and monitored with phone calls).

Results

There was no main effect of time (retrospective vs. prospective fall) and training (treadmill training vs. control) on fall reduction (p > 0.05 for both). The survival distributions of event of all-cause falls or slip falls were comparable between groups (p > 0.05 for both).

Discussion

Unlike overground slip training where a single training session could significantly reduce everyday falls in a 6-month follow-up period, the results indicated that one treadmill-based gait slip training session by itself was unable to produce similar effects.

Conclusion

Further modification of the training protocol by increasing training dosage (e.g., number of sessions or perturbation intensity) may be necessary to enhance transfer to daily living. This study (NCT02126488) was registered on April 30, 2014.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (R01-AG044364 to Tanvi Bhatt and Yi-Chung Pai).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physical Therapy, College of Applied Health and Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, 60612, USA

    Yiru Wang, Shuaijie Wang, Anna Lee, Yi-Chung Pai & Tanvi Bhatt

  2. Program in Rehabilitation Sciences, College of Applied Health and Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, 60612, USA

    Yiru Wang & Anna Lee

  3. Center for Mobility and Rehabilitation Engineering Research, Kessler Foundation, West Orange, NJ, 07052, USA

    Xuan Liu

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  1. Yiru Wang
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Contributions

TB and YCP contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by YW, SW, XL and AL. The first draft of the manuscript was written by YW and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yi-Chung Pai or Tanvi Bhatt.

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The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Statement of human and animal rights

This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and this study was approved by the Institutional Review Board in the University of Illinois at Chicago.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Wang, Y., Wang, S., Liu, X. et al. Can a single session of treadmill-based slip training reduce daily life falls in community-dwelling older adults? A randomized controlled trial. Aging Clin Exp Res 34, 1593–1602 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-022-02090-3

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