Development of intervention strategies for the prevention of fall injuries

• Main Author: Koh, Aik Hong.
• Other Authors: School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: DRNTU::Science::Biological sciences::Human anatomy and physiology::Neurobiology
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/39989
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Tactile touch, with no mechanical purpose, has long been recognized as a useful form of fall intervention. Moreover, the vestibular apparatus is also an important part of a human body that will affect balance. It can be observed that while efforts to mitigate fall injuries are widely recognized and researched on, the efforts spent on the prevention of fall is surprisingly little and obsolete. Since prevention is better than cure, there is much room for improvement in this area. The objective of this study is to conduct experiments to investigate effective solutions to improve postural balance. In this study, two sets of experiments were conducted to find for correcting postural disequilibrium. Tactile touch on the body namely: forehead, neck, shoulder, finger, abdomen, knee and ankle, was investigated first, followed by application of an auditory stimulus. Mean distance from mean COP, RMS distance from mean COP, total distance travelled by COP, mean velocity of COP, area covered by COP and frequency of COP were selected to be studied. Paired samples t-test with 95% confidence level interval was used to differentiate and analyze each parameter. Results showed that tactile touch on the forehead reduced MDIST (10.17%), RDIST (9.86%), TOTEX (7.13%), MVELO (7.14%) and AREA-CC (17.78%), while tactile stimulating the shoulder suppressed TOTEX (8.45%) and MVELO (8.44%). These findings may be used for derivation of intervention strategies for the prevention of fall injuries.