Gait Instability, Fall History, Sex, and Neuropsychiatric Symptoms are associated with Falls in People with Dementia
Description: Dementia is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder with cognitive and motor symptoms. Among the activities of daily living of people with dementia, gait is of high concern as gait impairments are associated with increased risk of falls. Previous studies have mainly quantified spatiotemporal gait variables in people with dementia. However, impairment in spatiotemporal measures could reflect cautious gait arising from a fear of falling in this population and not the cause of falls. Many of these studies assess gait in a laboratory environment or at a single time point and may not reflect gait in a natural environment. The aim of the present study was therefore to investigate the relationship between gait features extracted from naturalistic vision-based gait assessments to future falls in older people with dementia. 52 people with dementia admitted to this study. The following information and tests were gathered upon enrollment to the study: demographic data, admission neuropsychiatric inventory score (NPI), history of falls, severe impairment battery-short version (SIBS), Tinetti performance oriented mobility assessment (POMA) for balance and gait, and the Katz index of independence in activities of daily living (KATZ). Fall incidents during the inpatient admission were recorded from the medical chart. Thirty measures of gait in five categories were calculated namely, spatiotemporal, variability, symmetry, stability and frequency domain measures. Separate Poisson regression analyses for each gait measure, including adjusted for demographic and clinical covariates were completed using number of falls during the admission as the dependent variable. Our findings indicated that gait stability (margin of stability), sex, NPI score, and fall history are important independent predictors of falls in people with dementia. This study is a novel application of environmental vision-based sensors for the assessment of gait stability.
Amount: CA$1,000
Funding type: fellowship
Funder scheme: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support
Start date: 2019-04-01
End date: 2020-03-31
Investigator: Sina Mehdizadeh
Institution: Toronto Rehabilitation Institute-UHN
Field: Health Professions
Domain: Health Sciences
Funded outputs count: 0
Funder award ID: 164439_1
OpenAlex ID: G169555891