Paul S. Sung

By Paul S. Sung and Pamela Danial

The quantification of balance stability is valuable to a number of populations, including older adults with low back pain (LBP). Investigations into postural stability and one‐leg standing should be performed to integrate balance performance using kinematic and kinetic indices. The comparison of postural control between older adults with LBP and healthy older adults might contribute to a further understanding of postural adaptations, especially when considering visual condition. The one‐leg standing test would highlight the differences in kinematic and kinetic stabilities between groups. Because the eyes‐closed condition results in significantly decreased spinal stability, the normalized kinematic and kinetic indices could be utilized to compare postural integration as well as proprioceptive responses. Older adults with LBP demonstrated higher lumbar spine stability in the eyes‐open condition, which might be due to a possible pain avoiding strategy from the standing limb. Clinicians need to consider both kinetic and kinematic indices and visual condition when addressing lumbar spine stability. Quantified indices for compensatory patterns might provide further understanding of optimal injury prevention and rehabilitation strategies for individuals with LBP.

Part of the book: Innovations in Spinal Deformities and Postural Disorders

By Paul S. Sung and Dongchul Lee

Falls in older adults can cause disabling health even though falls are largely preventable. A combination of fall risk factors can be modified or predicted to minimize devastating complications. However, clinical balance assessment tools often have contradictory results since fall risks are individualized and multifactorial. The assessment tools are often practically limited to detecting sensitive changes between older adults with and without balance deficits. Recently, a similarity index (SI) has been developed to predict fall risks based on kinematic data during gait. The combined limb motions to those of a prototype derived from healthy individuals in the gait cycle might be differentiated from individuals with gait pathologies. The analyzed calculations result in response vectors that would be compared to controls-derived prototype response vectors. Furthermore, the normalized SI, based on the vector representing the data distribution, could be generated from the enhanced (dis)similarities dataset of subjects following an intervention (prototype response vectors). These quantified indices for compensatory patterns provide a further understanding of optimal injury prevention and specific rehabilitation strategies for older adults with balance deficits. This chapter will propose a novel sensitive measure, the SI, for older adults with orthopedic and neurologic dysfunction compared with control subjects.

Part of the book: Recent Research on Balance Disorders