Objective: The aim of this study was to analyze the postural adjustments in fallers and non-fallers Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients.

Background: Adequate reactive postural response as sure a successful recovery from unexpected perturbations. The ability to successfully recover from external perturbations can be accessed through the center of pressure (CoP) behavior analyses. Although PD patients have an impairedpostural control (usually linked to higher number of falls) the CoP reactive adjustment differences between PD fallers and non-fallers were not deeply investigated.

Methods: Forty patients with PD (21 fallers and 19 non fallers) and nineteen neurologically healthy people (CG) participated in this study. Fall status was determined considering the occurrence of at least one fall inthe previous 12 months. For the postural control assessment, a custom-made equipment was used in order to provoke an unexpected posterior surface translation (50 mm; 15 cm/s). A force plate (positioned above this equipment) allowed the achievement of the following CoP parameters: total displacement, range displacement after perturbation and recovery, response time to perturbation and time to recovery, mean velocity response to perturbation and mean velocity to recovery, and the root mean square of the displacement. An ANOVA one-way was used to compare all groups.

Results: The statistical analyses showed a group difference in recovery time (p<0.001). The post-hoc test showed that PD fallers take a longer time to recover than non fallers (p=0.004) and CG (p<0.001). No other variables showed statistical differences between groups. Additionally, a Spearman test showed a good correlation between falls occurrence and time to recovery (r=0.651; p=0,001).

Conclusions: It can be concluded that fallers seem to have more difficulties to recover from unexpected perturbation remaining for a longer time in an unstable situation. Our results also show that this difficulty to fast recover from external perturbation is highly correlated to falls occurrence. Finally, our results suggest that the inability to recovery from external perturbations is not determined by the presence of PD, since non-fallers showed very similar results than CG. Since fallers show a higher time to recover the stable position because they have several impairments as the decrease of lower limb strength’s and as the sensory-motor integration impairments.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/falls-in-parkinsons-disease-are-related-to-delayed-recovery-time-after-unexpected-external-perturbations/