Effect of Textured Insoles on Gait Variability During Continous Overground Walking in Older Adult Fallers and Non-Fallers
Falls represents one of the leading causes of injury and mortality in older adults. There is a need amongst gait clinicians and researchers to develop better methods to analyze fall risk. In addition to the calculation of mean spatiotemporal gait parameters, gait variability and the fractal scaling index (FSI) have been suggested to be sensitive markers of previous falls and predictive of future fall risk in older adults. Gait variability and the FSI of gait require hundreds of strides for valid analysis, which requires specific technology such as accelerometers to capture such large data sets. In addition to developing more sensitive measures to quantify fall risk, it is imperative to develop interventions that will reduce or prevent falls in older adults. Textured insoles are a recent intervention method that have been suggested to improve proprioceptive acuity in older adults, and as such are postulated to reduce and prevent falls. The purpose of this study was to determine the immediate (i.e., the acute) effect of textured insoles on step- and stride time variability, along with the FSI of stride time during continuous overground walking in older adult fallers and to compare these results to a healthy group of older adult non-fallers. Group differences were found with respect to mean step- and stride time. No significant differences were found for step- and stride time variability along with the FSI of gait. An interaction effect revealed that the textured insoles altered the mean spatiotemporal gait values differently between groups. As a result, this thesis demonstrates that a history of falls does appear to increase mean stepand stride time, and that textured insoles resulted in an increased step- and stride time with a greater change experienced in the older adult fallers. Keywords: textured insoles, gait variability, fractal scaling index (FSI), accelerometry, falls
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Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina