Multisensory training for postural sway control in non-injured elderly females

Abstract

Elderly adults demonstrate increased postural sway, which may ultimately lead to falls. The present study used a randomized controlled intervention to investigate whether the three-week multisensory training program lead to a decreased postural sway. A total of 24 non-injured elderly females (60-80 years) volunteered to participate. They were randomly assigned to either a training group (ETG) who received one hour of training twice weekly for three weeks or to a control group (ECG) who received no training. At post-training, the results showed significant improvement in the trained ETG when compared to the untrained ECG for all three postural sway measures for all six training factors. The findings demonstrated that the trained ETG improved in their total Berg Balance Test (BBT) scores indicated that the training program successfully improved postural sway control for non-injured elderly females.

Keywords: multisensory training, postural sway control, balance ability, visual input;
vestibular input, somatosensory input