Do clinical assessments, steady-state or daily-life gait characteristics predict falls in ambulatory chronic stroke survivors?

Abstract

Independent of the type of gait assessment, qualitative gait characteristics are better fall predictors than clinical assessments. Clinicians should therefore consider gait analyses as an alternative for identifying fall-prone stroke survivors.

Does a Perturbation-Based Gait Intervention Enhance Gait Stability in Fall-Prone Stroke Survivors? A Pilot Study

“…Data analysis for determining steady-state gait characteristics was consistent with our previous study 9 . Briefly, participants walked on the GRAIL treadmill.…”

“…The gait events foot contact (FC) and foot off (FO) were determined using the Center of Pressure (CoP) 14 . Gait characteristics like; spatio-temporal, variability and local divergence exponent were determined using 60 consecutive strides 9 .…”

“…Most falls occur during walking 1, 8 and we recently found that gait characteristics derived from daily life gait and from a laboratory gait assessment are able to predict fall risk in "Does a Perturbation Based Gait Intervention Enhance Gait Stability in Fall Prone Stroke Survivors? A Pilot Study" by Punt M et al Journal of Applied Biomechanics © 2019 Human Kinetics, Inc. stroke survivors 9 . Therefore, as a first step in the development of an effective fall prevention program, we studied whether PBT enhances gait stability in ambulatory chronic stroke survivors who are prone to falls.…”

Virtual obstacle crossing: Reliability and differences in stroke survivors who prospectively experienced falls or no falls

“…A group of twenty-nine stroke survivors derived from a larger cohort [15] participated in the obstacle crossing task. After a six-month follow up, twelve stroke survivors (41%) reported at least one fall, and were classified as fall prone stroke survivors (F).…”

“…Therefore, the main aims of the present experiment were to assess test-retest reliability of characteristics of virtual obstacle crossing and assess differences between stroke survivors who experienced falls or no falls. We note here that the data reported were obtained from participants of a previous study that found that steady-state gait characteristics were associated with fall risk [15].…”