The effect of single trial transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation on balance and gait function in elderly people with dementia: a pilot study

Abstract

Objective: Elderly people with dementia experience not only cognitive dysfunction but also motor function deficits, such as balance and gait impairments. Recently, transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) has been used to reduce pain as well as to control muscle spasm, spasticity and motor performance in various types of subjects. The purpose of this study determined the effect of a single trial TENS on balance and gait function in elderly people with dementia. Design: A randomized controlled trial. Methods: Twenty-two subjects with dementia were assigned to the TENS group (n=12) and ten subjects were assigned to the control group (n=10) randomly. Subjects were classified into two groups: the TENS group (n=12) and the placebo-TENS group (n=10). The TENS group had electrical stimulation applied on the calf muscle for 15 minutes, while the placebo-TENS group had not received real electrical stimulation. The timed up and go test (TUG) and functional reach test (FRT) were used to measure the balance function, and the 10 meters walk test (MWT) and 6MWT were used to assess gait ability. All tests were performed before and after intervention under a single-blinded condition. Results: After intervention, there were significant improvements in TUG, FRT, 10MWT, and 6MWT results in the TENS group (p<0.05), while the placebo-TENS group did not show significant changes in all outcome measurements. There were also differences in all tests between the two groups at post-measurements (p<0.05). Conclusions: This study demonstrated that a single trial TENS application on the calf may be used to improve balance and gait function in elderly people with dementia.

The Effects of Electrical Stimulation Program on Navicular Height, Balance, and Fear of Falling in Community-Dwelling Elderly

“…The TENS group had a higher navicular height and a lower fear of falling than the CON group. The clinical relevance of using TENS is that TENS impulse is speculated to enhance the strength of the plantar foot intrinsic muscles, as supported by [27]. A study investigated the strengthening effect of using TENS and found an increase in the strength of the plantar foot flexor muscles in elderly individuals.…”

“…Additionally, another study revealed an increase in muscle mass by 6.6% following electrical muscle stimulation application, which was investigated using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry [29]. The explanation of this change can be due to the neural adaptations stimulated by the generating of direct impulse to nerves inside the targeted muscle, subsequently leading to twitch contractions [27]. Moreover, electrical impulses likely reverse the physiological recruitment pattern of motor units where fast twitches become faster than slow units.…”

Modeling health oriented lifelong learning (HOLL) to prevent, delay and/or treat aging or aged dementias caused by less mentally stimulating activities

“…We use published clinic trial data [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] and our previous published models of brain memories [19,20], meridian channels [21,22] as well as theories of biochemistry, learning [23,24] and artificial neural network (ANN) [25,26].…”

“…However, the responses in the related working memories are distributed too. Therefore, our model in this figure gives an explain the clinical researches [14,15]: the distributed stimulation improves the patient's recalling abilities, but may disturb normal people's retrieving memories.…”

“…To cure or treat the aging or aged dementias, clinical researches have been performed using music or song (sing) therapies with no side effects [13], and using electric stimulation with minimum side effects [14,15].…”