Citation

Giansanti D. Physiol. Meas. 2006; 27(11): 1081-1090.

Affiliation

Dipartimento di Tecnologie e Salute, Istituto Superiore di Sanita, Viale Regina Elena 299, 00161 Roma, Italy. dgiansa@iss.it

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, Institute of Physics, Publisher IOP Publishing)

DOI

10.1088/0967-3334/27/11/003

PMID

17028403

Abstract

A clinical tool and an associated test that can assess fall-risk in elderly patients have been designed. The clinical tool was based on a wearable device with accelerometers and rate gyroscopes to identify trunk kinematic parameters. The test was based on a posturography protocol with different constraints and statistical analysis of the kinematic parameters. Statistical clustering based on the Mahalanobis distance was carried out using three groups of 30 subjects (1, age < 65 years; 2, age > or = 65 years and 3, age > or = 65 years and a fall history). The method was statistically validated using three groups of 100 subjects. The test allowed discrimination of elderly subjects with a high fall-risk with high specificity > or = 0.930 and sensitivity > or = 0.939.

Language: en