• 한국노년학
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.895-902
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• 2019

This study reviewed the diagnosis accuracy and evaluation criteria of the fall risk assessment questionnaire that proved validity through factor analysis in previous studies. The purpose of this study was to diagnose high-risk groups and propose personal fall risk profiles for the Korean community-dwelling elderly. The participants of this study were 439 elderly people living in S, U, B, and Y cities Korea (mean age 75.0 ± 5.7 years). Receiver operating characteristic analysis was conducted to review the accuracy of the fall risk assessment and evaluation criteria of the FRA. The results showed that the four sub-factors of the FRA: 'Potential for fall', 'Disease and physical symptoms', 'Environment' and 'Physical function', can effectively diagnose the fall risk of the community-dwelling elderly. The evaluation criteria was presented based on the sensitivity and specificity results. In addition, as a result of analyzing the patterns by the sub factors of the fall risk, the high-risk group accounted for 80% of the elderly who had problems with two or more factors. Therefore, the four sub-factors of FRA can effectively diagnose the fall risk level, and could be present individual fall risk profiles based on the evaluation criteria.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.569-582
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to verify the impact protection performance and to evaluate the activity, design, fit, and pad characteristics of the fall impact protection clothing for elderly women. The protective clothing was designed as pants type and underwear type, and an impact protection pad in the form of a tightly connected regular hexagon piece was inserted in the hip and hip joints. The pad was made of two kinds of foam single pad and foam and gel combination pad so that they could be inserted into pants type and underwear type, respectively. The results of the shock absorption performance of the fall impact protective clothing showed that when the impact force of 4601N was applied to the pants type protective clothing, the impact force was reduced by 29% in the foam pad type and 26% in the gel and foam pad type. When the force of 5113N was applied to the underwear type, it decreased by 40% in the foam pad type and by 34% in the gel and foam pad type. As a result of wearing evaluation of subject group, it was found that fit and activity of underwear type was better than that of pants type. Foam pad type was evaluated to be lighter than gel and foam pad type in both the subject and the expert group and the gel and foam pad was evaluated to be more flexible in the expert group.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.88-95
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• 2020

In this paper, we propose a new arm swing walking pattern-based walking safety system for safe walking of elderly pedestrians. The proposed system is a walking safety system for elderly pedestrians using haptic-based devices such as smart bands and smart watches, and arm swing-based walking patterns to solve the problem that it is difficult to recognize the fall situation of pedestrians with the existing walking patterns of lower limb movements. Use. The arm swing-based walking pattern recognizes the number of steps and the fall situation of pedestrians through the swing of the arm using the acceleration sensor of the device, and creates a database of the location of the fall situation to warn elderly pedestrians when walking near the expected fall location. It delivers a message to provide pedestrian safety to the elderly. This system is expected to improve the safe walking rights and environment of the elderly.

• Physical Therapy Korea
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.45-54
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• 2014

Fall is one of the most intimidating health conditions in elders. Comprehensive assessment is necessary to understand the individual and environmental aspects of the falls such as balancing abilities, depression, and quality of life. The purpose of this study was to compare the balancing ability, depression, and quality of life between elderly fallers and elderly non-fallers. Thirty-two community-dwelling elders (fifteen males and seventeen females between 65 and 83 years old), who have experienced fall on walking during last twelve months, were involved in the elderly fallers group. And twenty-four males and twenty-two females between 65 and 83 years old of community-dwelling elders, who have no experienced fall on walking during last twelve months, were involved in the elderly non-fallers group. Berg balance scale (BBS), timed up and go test (TUG), and functional reach test (FRT), were used to evaluate the ability of the physical balance. 'Beck depression scale in Korean' questionnaire was used to assess the depression. 'Korean version of World Health Organization Quality of Life Assessment Instrument-Bref' questionnaire was used to assess the quality of life. The results were as follows: 1) Balancing abilities measured by the BBS, TUG in the elderly fallers group were meaningfully lower than that of the elderly non-fallers group (p<.05), whereas no significant difference in the FRT was found (p>.05). 2) Depression level in the elderly fallers group was significantly higher than that of the elderly non-fallers group (p<.05). 3) Quality of life in the elderly fallers group was significantly lower than that of the elderly non-fallers group, excluding environment domain (p<.05). Therefore, in order for clinical evaluation of the community-dwelling elders those with reduced balancing ability, it is necessary to evaluate and understand the fall experience, depression, and quality of life.

• 한국노년학
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.1107-1116
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• 2010

The elderly people with advancing years have many problems such as the decline of the proprioceptive, visual & vestibular function and muscle weakness. Furthermore the decrease of the reflex which influences the balance ability in sudden change of the movement could cause the falls. The difficulty of the balance caused by the fear releated to the fall aggravates the Falls Efficacy and causes a lot of the disability of the independent activities of daily living. The purpose of this study was the effect of a Virtual Reality Program on Static Balance control and Fall efficacy of Elderly people. 14 elderly people(subjects) who were ≥65years of age partiripated in this study and they were divided into VR(Virtual Reality) group(n=7) and Control group (n=7). VR group took the general physical therapy & IREX and only the general physical therapy was carried out in the control group. VR group of intervention was carried out for 30min. total 8times. They were evaluated by BIO-Rescue, Fall Efficacy Scale before and after treatment. The Static Balance control and Fall efficacy were assessed by Bio-Rescue & Falls Efficacy Scale. The analysis of the resulf was assessed by Wilcoxon signed test & Mann-Whitney U test. The result showed that the static balance of VR group with the open eyes was improved in a static balance test and range of the movement was increased in limited of stability. And Falls Efficacy was also efficacious. IREX was effective to static balance control and Falls Efficacy of the elderly When we think about these effects, various treatments and objective assessments using VR program will be needed for the elderly

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.533-539
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• 2024

This study investigated the effects of two exercise programs, which include exercise methods to increase muscle strength, balance, and endurance, on the balance ability and fall efficacy of elderly people, and the differences in effects according to preference. Twenty-one elderly people were divided into a group using assistive devices using elastic bands (Experimental Group 1) and a group using the body (Experimental Group 2) and an exercise program was conducted for 4 weeks. The single leg stand (SLS) and functional reach test (FRT) were used to evaluate the elderly's balance ability, and the fall efficacy scale (FES) was used to evaluate the degree of fear of falling. A pre-evaluation was conducted after a 2-week integrated exercise program, and a post-evaluation was conducted after applying the exercise program for 4 weeks. In the study results, within-group SLS, FRT, and FES analyzes all showed statistically significant improvement in the post-assessment compared to the pre-assessment. However, there were no significant differences in the comparison between groups regarding exercise program and between groups according to preference. In conclusion, in order to increase the balance ability and fall efficacy of the elderly, an exercise program must be applied, and it is necessary to use a program that is easy to apply and includes exercise methods that the elderly can easily perform.

• Journal of Home Health Care Nursing
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.34-43
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• 2017

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to provide basic data to develop a Fall Prevention Education Program by comparing and analyzing fall experiences and the factors that influence elderly people with dementia suffering falls. Methods: The participants were 302 patients with dementia aged 60 years or older with nursing records of hospitalization in three nursing homes located in a metropolitan area. The SPSS/Win 21.0 package was used to analyze the collected data. A logistic regression analysis was performed to identify the influence factors related to fall experiences. Results: For men, fall experiences were more frequent given the following factors: overweight; high fall risk tendency; aged 90 and above; married; dementia duration period of 5 to 9 years; and taking medication for dementia. For women, the factors included age range of 80 to 89; overweight; obese; both low and high fall risk tendency; separation by death; and having spent less than 1 year in nursing homes. Conclusion: We anticipate positive results in fall prevention education programs for the elderly with dementia if the results of this study are used as basic data, and interventions are customized to consider the sex and the relevant influence factors as to fall experiences.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2013.10a
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• pp.393-395
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• 2013

In modern society, the elderly over 65 years old are increasing due to development of medical technology and improvement of their standard of living. Severe fall of the elderly can lead to death threats. To solve this problem, several algorithms and hardware systems for fall detection have been studied and developed. In this paper, a fall detection system using 3-axial acceleration sensor is presented. In the fall detection system, several types of fall-feature parameters are calculated and then the fall is determined by using them. Using this system, best sensitivity and specificity are 98.3% and 94.7%, respectively.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.96-101
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• 2022

As the elderly population gradually increases, the risk of fatal fall accidents among the elderly is increasing. One way to cope with a fall accident is to determine the fall direction before impact using a wearable inertial measurement unit (IMU). In this context, a previous study proposed a method of classifying fall directions using a support vector machine with sensor velocity, acceleration, and tilt angle as input parameters. However, in this method, the IMU signals are processed through several processes, including a Kalman filter and the integration of acceleration, which involves a large amount of computation and error factors. Therefore, this paper proposes a machine learning-based method that classifies the fall direction before impact using IMU raw signals rather than processed data. In this study, we investigated the effects of the following two factors on the classification performance: (1) the usage of processed/raw signals and (2) the selection of machine learning techniques. First, as a result of comparing the processed/raw signals, the difference in sensitivities between the two methods was within 5%, indicating an equivalent level of classification performance. Second, as a result of comparing six machine learning techniques, K-nearest neighbor and naive Bayes exhibited excellent performance with a sensitivity of 86.0% and 84.1%, respectively.

• Journal of Industrial Convergence
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.1-7
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• 2018

This study is a descriptive research study for examining the general characteristics and health-related characteristics of the elderly in a local community, investigating factors for the fear of fall and identifying the relationship between the fear of fall, attitude to fall and fall efficacy. The subject of this study was 140 senior citizens who are using a community center in D city. The collected data was analyzed with the SPSS/WIN 21.0 program. The result of the study showed there was a significant difference in the fear of fall according to gender, person living together, subjective health condition, pain and unsafe gait. There was a significant negative correlation between the fear of fall and fall fear and fall efficacy. However, fall fear and fall efficacy were positive correlated. This study aims to provide necessary preliminary data for developing fall prevention program that can improve the fear of fall, attitude to fall and fall efficay based on the results of this study.