A Comparison of the Falls Efficacy Scale-International with Berg Balance Scale to Evaluate the Risk of Falls in Post Stroke Patients

Abstract

Falling is the leading medical complication in patients with all stages of stroke. The present study was carried out to predict the risk of falling in patients with stroke for evaluating the agreement between the FES-I and BBS balance measures and to establish the strongest scale for measuring the risk of falls in clinical practice. Total 50 stroke patients were collected whose age were ≥40 years and post stroke period was ≥6 months. Kappa measure of agreement and Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) were estimated for determining the agreement between the FES-I and BBS tools. Logistic Regression (LR) was done for the falling history over the last six months with age on the BBS. The Symmetric Measures of Kappa for determining the agreement between FES-I and BBS was-0.466. Sixteen subjects (32%) had low agreement on status of falling. The ICC was-0.769 (-77%). Considerable relation was found on BBS without significant value. The Kappa and ICC measures declared that, there was lower to moderate agreement between FES-I and BBS to predict the risk of falls. Patients with stroke had a reasonable BBS score to predict the risk of falls as compared to FES-I.