Riva, D, Fanì, M, Benedetti, MG, Scarsini, A, Rocca, F, Mamo, C, “Effects of High-Frequency Proprioceptive Training on Single Stance Stability in Older Adults: Implications for Fall Prevention” BioMed Research International, 2019: 2382747, 2019.
In developed countries, falls are the leading cause of injury in adults over the age of 65 years [1]. The risk of falling increases with age because of extrinsic and intrinsic reasons. Among the intrinsic factors, single stance instability is a major risk factor for falls and loss of independence [2, 3].
Older adults show important changes in spatial and temporal gait parameters: decreased stride length and speed, decreased single support time, and increased stride width [4–8]. Some authors consider these changes consequent to aging [8–10], whereas others consider them as stabilizing adaptations to fear of falling and instability [5, 8, 9, 11, 12]. Nevertheless, these gait changes have been shown to be risk factors for falls in prospective studies [6, 12].
