A097 Fall and Accident Avoidance in Older people with an intellectual disability

1. A Pilot study on Fall Exercise
Intervention
for persons with intellectual disabilities
Rex Chan wai-hung
Regional Physiotherapist, FUHONG Society
HONG KONG
RI World Congress
26 October 2016

2. Introduction
• Ageing ID persons having higher risk of
dementia , osteoporosis and fall
• Falls devastating
• Timely and feasible interventions

3. • Risk factors for falls management
• Assessment and outcome measurement tools
to evaluate and prevent falls
• Interventions and prevention strategies may
differ for individuals with IDs

4. Objective
• to evaluate the effectiveness of a specifically
designed fall exercise programme by respective
changes in three balance assessment tools for users
with intellectual disabilities (ID) at fall risk
Tinetti balance sub-scores
Bergs Balance score BBS
Timed up and go test TUG tests

5. Method
Phase II: 24 weeks of Fall Exercise regime for 23 users
Medium Fall risk
Phase I: baseline sampling data base for 70 eligible
fall risk users including gender, sex, degree of IDs,
mobility status and Fall risks benchmarking , BBS)/
TUG ) /Tinetti balance sub-scores

6. Quality control measures
• Inclusion criteria
• Outcome indicators- valid and reliable
• Fall exercise protocol
• Regular monitoring on implement /
attendance of fall exercise regime

7. Results and findings
• Overall improvement for pre and post BBC;
TUG test and Tinetti balance sub-scores
• Female subjects showed better performance
compared to male
• Degree of IDs , mobility status correlating
factor
• Age is not a correlating factor

8. Discussion
• Three outcome indicators pre & post P value is 0.000
whilst TUG test is 0.026. Still significant difference
but less for TUG test( Using Non-parametrics)
• There is improvement at 5% level of significance
( p<0.05) for respective three outcome indicators ,
BBS, TUG and Tinetti balance sub-scores.

9. Conclusion and future directions
• Assessment tools
--- The use of observation to assess mobility proved to
be the most useful tool for those individuals with more
cognitive limitations or behavior problems
--- A scored observational tool may be a possible
alternative method of screening gait and balance
capabilities

10. • Therapeutic intervention
--- Laser
acupuncture
--- Vibration/
Oscillation therapy