Impacto da plataforma vibratória no equilíbrio em idosas saudáveis

Abstract

Introduction: With the ageing, changes in the balance are inherent in the physiological process, causing falls and complications associated with it. There are many strategies to improve balance, such as resistance physical exercise program, Tai Chi, and more recently whole body vibration. Objectives: to evaluate the efficacy of the whole body vibration over the balance and in life quality in healthy elderly women in the Geriatric clinic of São Lucas Hospital. Methods: sixteen weeks randomized clinical trial with 18 elderly women (9 in the interventional group and 9 in the control group) with age greater or equal 60 years, patients in Geriatric clinic of São Lucas Hospital. They do not have any severe or disabling diseases whose source is rheumatologic, orthopedic, neurovascular, renal or hepatic. The interventional group has trained in a whole body vibration with frequency between 10-15 Hz and the control has a sedentary life style. Exposure to whole body vibration was intermittent (3 minutes, 1 minute rest) for 11 minutes, three times per week during sixteen weeks. The instruments used were the social and health questionnaire, Berg Balance Scale, World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL) in the abbreviated version and Lawton´s Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Scale. Subjects were evaluated in the beginning, eight weeks and sixteen weeks after. For the analysis, frequencies, means, standard deviations, chisquare test, Student paired samples t-test, correlation coefficient of Pearson and McNemar test have been applied. The dataset was developed in Excel® 2007 and the data and statistical analysis was performed using SPSS 17. Results: in this study, no statistically significant difference between the interventional and control groups in the balance and life quality (p=0.81) has been achieved. However, a moderate correlation between the balance and the performance in the physical dominium in WHOQOL in the three evaluation moments (rt0=0.47, rt1=0.55 e rt2=0.56) has been shown. Conclusions: in this study, no improvement has been seen in the life quality and balance in the sample evaluated. However, it is important to mention that this limitation can be associated with the sampling size.