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POSTURAL STABILITY MEASUREMENTS John Gill; M Eng Sc. (Monash University)
Defined as the measurable ability of someone to stand in a steady or stable state, postural stability may vary vastly between people. For lower limb amputees postural stability is a prime part of their rehabilitation training. To this a successful and reusable method of postural stability measurement is required.
This report summarises the research work done in both establishing and defining a force plate and a corresponding set of stability tests for amputee patients. The equipment configuration, protocol and tests were subsequently clinically trialed through the investigated the postural stability on both amputee and non-amputee subjects. During the clinical trial information was analysed on both the stance stability and stance width factors, with particular reference to rehabilitation.
The underlying hypothesis for the clinical part of the trials was that :
(i) The amputee subjects were less stable than the non-amputee subjects and
(ii) over time, and with rehabilitation training, the amputee subjects were able to adapt to their prosthesis, and so increase their postural stability.
The study was conducted as the thesis component of a Master Of Engineering Science (Biomedical) at the Rehabilitation Unit of Monash University - REHABTech.
From this study a hardware configuration and methodology for the determination of sway has has been defined.
The clinical part of the study showed that there was definitely decreased stability in the amputee subjects, when compared to the non-amputee subjects. However, the remaining unknown factor is how unstable the amputee subjects were before they became amputees,although it hardly seems likely that they would be as unstableas they were when tested here.
Analysis of the stance width factors in stability showed that for the non-amputee patients a wider stance width would appear to give a more stable base and thus more stability. The data for stance width verses stability for the amputee subjects was inconclusive.
From the retesting of the amputee patients after a period of weeks of rehabilitation training it would appear than, in the general case, there is increased stability in the amputee. It then follows that there should be an optimum point where training no longer is effective in increasing the stability of the patient and this could later be found and used where assessing training and rehabilitation sessions for an amputee patient, thus optimising training budgets and the use of rehabilitation staff time.
While this study was limited to only a small group of amputee and non-amputee subjects it has provided sufficient evidence that, through the use of the defined protocol and techniques used in this study, a larger scale study may be undertaken to produce a more definitive answer to the hypothesis raised at the beginning of this study.
