Effects of three home-based exercise programmes regarding falls, quality of life and exercise-adherence in older adults at risk of falling: protocol for a randomized controlled trial.

Background: Fall prevention interventions with home-based exercise programmes are effective to reduce the number and the rate of falls, by reducing risk factors. They improve balance, strength, function, physical activity, but it is known that older adults' exercise adherence declines over time. However, it is unclear which delivery-modalities of the home-based exercise programmes show the best adherence and the largest effect.

Concern about Falling and Complexity of Free-Living Physical Activity Patterns in Well-Functioning Older Adults.

Background: Fall-related psychological concerns are common among older adults, potentially contributing to functional decline as well as to restriction of activities and social participation. To effectively prevent such negative consequences, it is important to understand how even very low concern about falling could affect physical activity behavior in everyday life. We hypothesized that concern about falling is associated with a reduction in diversity, dynamics, and performance of daily activities, and that these features can be comprehensively quantified in terms of complexity of physical activity patterns.

Physical Behavior in Older Persons during Daily Life: Insights from Instrumented Shoes.

Activity level and gait parameters during daily life are important indicators for clinicians because they can provide critical insights into modifications of mobility and function over time. Wearable activity monitoring has been gaining momentum in daily life health assessment. Consequently, this study seeks to validate an algorithm for the classification of daily life activities and to provide a detailed gait analysis in older adults.

Instrumented Shoes for Real-Time Activity Monitoring Applications.

Activity monitoring in daily life is gaining momentum as a health assessment tool, especially in older adults and at-risk populations. Several research-based and commercial systems have been proposed with varying performances in classification accuracy. Configurations with many sensors are generally accurate but cumbersome, whereas single sensors tend to have lower accuracies.

Instrumented shoes for activity classification in the elderly.

Quantifying daily physical activity in older adults can provide relevant monitoring and diagnostic information about risk of fall and frailty. In this study, we introduce instrumented shoes capable of recording movement and foot loading data unobtrusively throughout the day. Recorded data were used to devise an activity classification algorithm.

Fallers in postacute rehabilitation have worse functional recovery and increased health services use.

Objectives: To determine characteristics associated with single and multiple fallers during postacute rehabilitation and to investigate the relationship among falls, rehabilitation outcomes, and health services use.

Design: Retrospective cohort study.

Setting: Geriatric postacute rehabilitation hospital.

Predictors of functional recovery in patients admitted to geriatric postacute rehabilitation.

Objective: To examine characteristics associated with functional recovery in older patients undergoing postacute rehabilitation.

Design: Observational study.

Setting: Postacute rehabilitation facility.

Relative and absolute reliability of the clinical version of the Narrow Path Walking Test (NPWT) under single and dual task conditions.

Decline in gait stability has been associated with increased fall risk in older adults. Reliable and clinically feasible methods of gait instability assessment are needed. This study evaluated the relative and absolute reliability and concurrent validity of the testing procedure of the clinical version of the Narrow Path Walking Test (NPWT) under single task (ST) and dual task (DT) conditions.