Constellation, le dépôt institutionnel de l'Université du Québec à Chicoutimi

Résumé

Introduction: Several researches have demonstrated the positive benefits of auditory and visual cueing in the gait improvements among individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, few studies have evaluated the role of vibrotactile cueing when compared to auditory and visual cueing. In this paper, we compare how these stimuli affect the risk of falling while walking on six types of soil (concrete, sand, parquet, broken stone, and two types of carpet).

Methods: An instrumented Timed Up and Go (iTUG) test served to evaluate how audio, visual and vibrotactile cueing can affect the risk of falling of elderly. This pilot study proposes twelve participants with PD (67.7 ± 10.07 years) and nine age-matched controls (66.8 ± 8.0 years). Both groups performed the iTUG test with and without cueing. The cueing frequency was set at 10% above the cadence computed at the lower risk level of falling (walking over the concrete). A computed risk of falling (ROFA) index has been compared to the TUG time (total TUG duration).

Results: The index for evaluating the risk of falling appears to have a good reliability (ICC > 0.88) in this pilot study. In addition, the minimal detectable change (MDC) suggests that the proposed index could be more sensitive to the risk of falling variation compared to the TUG time. Moreover, while using the cueing, observed results suggest a significant decrease in the computed risk of falling compared to ‘without cueing’ for most of types of soil especially for deformable soils, which can lead to fall.

Conclusion: When compared to other cueing, it seems that audio could be a better neurofeedback for reducing the risk of falling over different walking surfaces, which represent important risk factors for persons with gait disorder or loss functional autonomy.