Benefits of two twelve-week multimodal programs on reaction time in community dwellings at risk of falling: preliminary results

• Autor(a) principal: Rosado, Hugo
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Bravo, Jorge, Marmeleira, José, Mendes, Felismina, Pereira, Catarina
• Tipo de documento: Artigo de conferência
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10174/31097; https://doi.org/Rosado, H., Bravo, J., Raimundo, A., Marmeleira, J., Mendes, F., & Pereira, C. (2021). Benefits of two twelve-week multimodal programs on reaction time in community dwellings at risk of falling: preliminary results. European Journal of Public Health, 31 (2). https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckab120.062; https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckab120.062
• topic: aging; falls; exercise; feasibility study

Background A slower reaction time (RT) performance is considered a risk factor for falls. Different approaches as a psychomotor intervention (involving neuromotor exercises) or the whole-body vibration (inducing neurophysiological changes) may reduce the risk of falls. Nevertheless, a combined program may promote greater gains. This study aimed to investigate the acceptability and the effect of two multimodal programs on RT in community-dwelling older adults fallers or balance-impaired. Methods A total of 37 participants (74.3 ± 5.2 years) were divided into two groups (3x/week): experimental group 1 (psychomotor intervention); experimental group 2 [EG2] (combined program: psychomotor intervention + whole-body vibration). The Deary-Liewald reaction time task assessed RT. Simple and choice reaction time [CRT] (ms) tasks were recorded under single and dual-task (DT) paradigms. DT cost was also computed. Results The attendance rate was 86.3%. Wilcoxon test comparisons revealed significant differences between baseline and post-intervention evaluations in the EG2. The improvement was observed in the variable ‘CRT-DT’, in which participants spent less time to perform the task (1026.0 ± 153.4 vs. 960.4 ± 160.9, P = 0.040). The correspondent effect size was medium (r = 0.33). The DT cost was also decreased in CRT-DT by 3.9%. No significant differences between groups were found. Conclusions This study demonstrated that both programs were safe and highly attended. The results suggest that a combined intervention (psychomotor intervention + whole-body vibration) should be privileged to improve RT and reduce the risk of falls. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03446352. Funding: This study was supported by the ESACA Project (Grant ALT20-03-0145-FEDER-000007) and by FCT (SFRH/BD/147398/2019).