Virtual Reality Exercise Improves Balance of Elderly Persons with Type 2 Diabetes: a Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract

Abstract.[Purpose] The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a virtual reality exercise program on the balance of elderly persons with type 2 diabetes.[Subjects] Participants were randomly allocated to two groups: a VR-based exercise group (n=27) and a control group (28).[Methods] The VR group performed a VR-based exercise program for 50 minutes twice a week for 10 weeks, and the control group received only diabetes education without exercise activity. Balance was measured as postural sway using a force plate.[Results] Postural sway significantly decreased after the VR-based exercise.[Conclusion] The VR-based exercise program improved balance. These results suggest that VR-based exercise programs are suitable and effective preventing falls by elderly persons with type 2 diabetes.

Effectiveness of Exercise Interventions to Improve Postural Control in Older Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses of Centre of Pressure Measurements

“…The remaining eight studies consisted of fallers [15], institutionalised [16, 17], osteoarthritic [18], diabetic [19, 20] and diabetic peripheral neuropathic [21, 22] populations. Four trials included only women [16, 18, 23, 24].…”

“…The most common single component exercise intervention was balance training, of which six trials incorporated regular balance exercise [19, 21, 22, 29–31] and three performed tai chi [15, 25, 26]. Eight trials utilised resistance exercise tasks, whereby five were water based [18, 23, 27, 32, 33], two used vibration [17, 20], and one trial evaluated stair climbing [34] exercises.…”

“…The number of trials for each condition ranged from one [29, 30, 33, 35, 36] to ten [32], and trial duration ranged from 8 s [24] to 75 s [29]. The force platform or measurement equipment sampling frequency ranged from 5 Hz [28] to 1000 Hz [17], but was not reported by nine trials [15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 26, 27, 33]. Seven studies reported the use of a digital filter on the COP signal [20, 23, 30, 31, 34, 36, 37].…”

“…The most common COP variable reported was the total sway path length [15, 16, 19–21, 24–27, 33–35]. Ten trials reported measures of sway area [15, 17, 18, 23, 25, 26, 29, 30, 32, 33], ten trials reported ML sway length [16, 18–21, 28, 31, 32, 36, 37] and nine trials reported AP sway length [16, 18–21, 28, 32, 36, 37].…”

The Effect of a Virtual Reality Exercise Program on Physical Fitness, Body Composition, and Fatigue in Hemodialysis Patients

“…In recent years, utilizing virtual reality to increase the amount of physical activity of patients while overcoming some of the aforementioned limitations of exercise programs has been gaining ground in clinical practices 11 ) . Virtual reality has been applied as a clinical intervention for improving mobility or cognitive functions and has also been demonstrated to be a positive nursing intervention for chronic patients, as illustrated by the results of a 10-week virtual reality exercise program applied to elderly diabetes patients, who showed improved balance, muscle strength, walking, and falls efficacy 12 , 13 , 14 ) . The aim of this study was to propose a new nursing intervention method for hemodialysis patients through a virtual reality exercise program and investigate its effects on fitness, body composition, and fatigue.…”