步態訓練對社區重覆跌倒老人往前及往後步態之成效探討

Fall-related injuries are major reasons for disability and morbidity among elderly. Its related injuries increase healthcare-related costs and mortality. The main reason for recurrent falls is caused by internal factors. As gait disturbance is one of them, it would be rational to hypothesize that gait analysis may correct and prevent the falls on gait disturbances. Hence, the purpose of this study is to explore the improvement on the forward and backward gait after the eight-week gait training on the recurrent falls in the community-dwelling elderly. One-group pretest-posttest design with purposive sampling method was used in this study, and thirty participants who met the selection criteria were recruited. The questionnaire used for the interviews was structured. The GAITRite® electronic system was employed to evaluate forward and backward walking. All eligible participants were required to complete gait training using FW consisting of 16 sessions for 8 consecutive weeks. SPSS 19.0 for Windows was used to analyze the correlation or difference between the basic attributes and the gait parameters. Comparisons of the improvement between baseline and after exercise training were evaluated by Wilcoxon signed ranks test within group. The results revealed forward walking with decreased velocity (271.69 vs 189.68, p ＜ .0001), decreased cadence (329.71 vs 246.24, p ＜ .0001), decreased swing phase (37.29 vs 35.49, p ＜ .0001), shortened stride length (105.47 vs 94.97, p ＜ .001), and increased base of support (8.98 vs 12.66, p ＜ .0001). The results have demonstrated that the 8-week gait training program could effectively improve the spatiotemporal gait parameters in elderly with recurrent fall. It is suggested that gait training duration and frequency can increase for recurrent falls in the community-dwelling elderly in future.