Mobility test protocols for the elderly: a methodological note


Submitted: 19 June 2015
Accepted: 24 August 2015
Published: 23 September 2015
Abstract Views: 1689
PDF: 877
Publisher's note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Authors

  • Nejc Sarabon University of Primorska, Andrej Marusic Institute, Department of Health Study, Koper; S2P, Science to Practice, d.o.o., Laboratory for Motor Control and Motor Behaviour, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
  • Stefan Löfler Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Electrical Stimulation and Physical Rehabilitation, Vienna, Austria.
  • Gabriella Hosszu Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Electrical Stimulation and Physical Rehabilitation, Vienna, Austria.
  • Christian Hofer Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Electrical Stimulation and Physical Rehabilitation, Vienna, Austria.
Consequences of falls are a major health problem in elderly. Poor balance is the precursor of falls and balance impairment has been evidenced after an injury. On the other hand, balance and stability can be improved with training. At the beginning of the project Mobility in Aging one of the questions was how to measure dynamic and static balance in order to get reliable and sensitive parameters to follow the effect of decay in movement functions in elderly or to track the improvement after training. In this short report we will give a couple of answers to a long standing debate. There is indeed evidence in literature that stability and balance is very important. Elderly people often shift from the so called ankle strategy to the hip strategy for balancing. The reflex reactions are the more to decay and we observed more co-contractions. Also, inactivity causes slower muscles contractions. Our goal should be a combination of trainings, where we can see changes at neuromuscular, structural and molecular levels, but we would like to say that our training protocols did not touch all the aspects of movement function we aimed to observe. Future projects will hopefully provide the missing information.

Nejc Sarabon, University of Primorska, Andrej Marusic Institute, Department of Health Study, Koper; S2P, Science to Practice, d.o.o., Laboratory for Motor Control and Motor Behaviour, Ljubljana
Head of the laboratory

Supporting Agencies

European Regional Development Fund, Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research, Ludwig Boltzmann Geselschaft

Sarabon, N., Löfler, S., Hosszu, G., & Hofer, C. (2015). Mobility test protocols for the elderly: a methodological note. European Journal of Translational Myology, 25(4), 253–256. https://doi.org/10.4081/ejtm.2015.5385

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Citations


Similar Articles

1 2 > >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.