Article

The assessment of balance capacity for people with widely different balance
abilities is an important issue in clinical practice. We propose the narrow ridge
balance test as a sensitive tool to assess one-leg balance capacity. In this
test, participants are asked to perform single-leg stance on ridges of gradually
decreasing width (100, 80, 60, 40, 20, 10, and 4mm). An outcome measure was
developed, base on time in balance in relation to the gradually decreasing ridge
width. To evaluate the sensitivity and discriminating power of the test, we
applied it to two groups of participants, a group of young participants (age
20-30 years) and group of healthy elderly participants (age 60-80 years). The
test showed to sensitively differentiate between the two groups, showing lower
scores for the elderly. Furthermore, the test appeared to identify large
within-group differences. A special feature of this setup is that the difficulty
of the test increases with the balance capacity of the participant. In this way,
each participant is exposed to the maximally challenging task, and a broader
variety of balance control mechanisms come into play. Finally, the outcome score
of the new test was contrasted to conventional measures of standing balance,
showing good agreement.
CI - Copyright (c) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Langue : ANGLAIS