Kim Ungbeom, Lim Jeongtaek, Park Yongnam, Bae Youngsook
Department of Physical Therapy, College of Medical Science, Gachon University, Incheon, Republic of Korea.
Department of Physical Therapy, Suwon Women's University, Suwon-si, Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea.
Sci Rep. 2025 May 15;15(1):16915. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-02128-2.
We aimed to investigate the relationship of fall risk with spatiotemporal gait variables and variability in community-dwelling older adults and identify the key predictors of fall risk. A total of 303 older adults were classified into the fall-risk and non-fall-risk groups based on their Short Physical Performance Battery scores. The stance phase time, double stance time, stride length, step width, velocity, cadence, and coefficient of variation (CV) for each variable were measured on a treadmill at the preferred speed and 20% increased walking speed. The results showed that the fall-risk group had a significantly increased stance phase and double stance time, while the stride length, velocity, and cadence were significantly reduced compared to the non-fall-risk group at both speeds. Additionally, the CV for most variables was significantly higher in the fall-risk group. Notably, the step width variability was higher in the fall-risk group under both speed conditions and showed greater discriminative power at increased walking speed. Thus, gait variability, particularly step width variability, is a crucial predictor of fall risk. The increased variability observed in the fall-risk group at higher walking speed suggests that it could be a useful early indicator for predicting fall risk.
我们旨在研究社区居住的老年人跌倒风险与时空步态变量及变异性之间的关系,并确定跌倒风险的关键预测因素。根据简短体能状况量表得分,将303名老年人分为跌倒风险组和非跌倒风险组。在跑步机上以首选速度和步行速度提高20%的情况下,测量每个变量的站立相时间、双支撑时间、步长、步宽、速度、步频和变异系数(CV)。结果显示,与非跌倒风险组相比,跌倒风险组在两种速度下的站立相和双支撑时间均显著增加,而步长、速度和步频则显著降低。此外,跌倒风险组中大多数变量的CV显著更高。值得注意的是,在两种速度条件下,跌倒风险组的步宽变异性均更高,且在步行速度增加时显示出更大的判别力。因此,步态变异性,尤其是步宽变异性,是跌倒风险的关键预测因素。在较高步行速度下,跌倒风险组观察到的变异性增加表明,它可能是预测跌倒风险的有用早期指标。