Citation

Ihlen EA, Weiss A, Helbostad JL, Hausdorff JM. Biomed. Res. Int. 2015; 2015: e402596.

Affiliation

Center for the Study of Movement, Cognition, and Mobility, Department of Neurology, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, 64239 Tel Aviv, Israel ; Department of Physical Therapy, Sackler School of Medicine and Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Hindawi Publishing)

DOI

10.1155/2015/402596

PMID

26491669

PMCID

PMC4605256

Abstract

The present study compares phase-dependent measures of local dynamic stability of daily life walking with 35 conventional gait features in their ability to discriminate between community-dwelling older fallers and nonfallers. The study reanalyzes 3D-acceleration data of 3-day daily life activity from 39 older people who reported less than 2 falls during one year and 31 who reported two or more falls. Phase-dependent local dynamic stability was defined for initial perturbation at 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, and 80% of the step cycle. A partial least square discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) was used to compare the discriminant abilities of phase-dependent local dynamic stability with the discriminant abilities of 35 conventional gait features. The phase-dependent local dynamic stability λ at 0% and 60% of the step cycle discriminated well between fallers and nonfallers (AUC = 0.83) and was significantly larger (p < 0.01) for the nonfallers. Furthermore, phase-dependent λ discriminated as well between fallers and nonfallers as all other gait features combined. The present result suggests that phase-dependent measures of local dynamic stability of daily life walking might be of importance for further development in early fall risk screening tools.

Language: en