Objective: The aim of this study is to learn, patients who can’t make tandem standing fall more or not?

Background: Falls occur more often with advancing age and in neurological disease. Each year, approximately 30% to 40% of people aged 65 years and older who live in the community fall. Loss of balance cause falling in Parkinson disease.  Tandem standing is an important static balance test.

Methods: Demographic datas, falling history in the last 1 year were recorded.  We request from the  patient to put one foot in front of the other and to try to stand in this position for 10 seconds for analysing tandem standing.

Results: Twenty five men, 17 women totally 42 (64.70±11.38 years) patients with Parkinson’s disease included. Patient’s UPDRS score (36.27±25.15) recorded. 34.2 % of the patients had falling history in the last one year. 44.4 % of the patients couldn’t make tandem standing. There was no significant difference between tandem standing and falling history (p=0.610) and there was no significant difference between Hoehn-yahr stage and falling history (p=0.536).

Conclusions: :  In this study ,most of our patients were in low stages of Hoen Yahr (Stage 1, n=15 and Stage 1.5, n=10). We did not find significant difference between falling story  (due to the stage of the disease) and tandem standing.  So according to our study, tandem gait disorder can not be an early predictor for falling in Parkinson’s disease patients.

References: 1)Ebersbach G1, Gunkel M. Posturography reflects clinical imbalance in Parkinson’s disease.Mov Disord. 2011 Feb 1;26(2):241-6.

2)Thomas M1, Jankovic J, Suteerawattananon M, Wankadia S, Caroline KS, Vuong KD, Protas E. Clinical gait and balance scale (GABS): validation and utilization. J Neurol Sci. 2004 Jan 15;217

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/tandem-standing/