• Physical Therapy Korea
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.46-54
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• 2016

Background: Rasch analysis estimates the probability that a respondent will endorse an item and select a particular rating for that item. It has the advantage of placing both the items and the person along a single ration scale and calibrates person ability and item difficulty onto an interval scale by logits. In addition, Rasch analysis is a useful tool for exploring the validity of questionnaires that have been developed using traditional methods. Therefore, it has been recommended as a method for developing and evaluating functional outcome measures. Objects: The purpose of this study was to investigate the item fit, item difficulty, and rating scale of the Korean version of the Fullerton Advanced Balance Scale (KFAB) using Rasch analysis. Methods: Total 97 subjects (39 males and 58 females) with dwelling elderly adults were participated, but 3 people were excluded for misfit persons. Rasch analysis was then done by means of the Winsteps program to determine the item fit, item difficulty, rating scale, and reliability of the KFAB. Results: In this study, the 'standing with feet together and eyes closed', 'two-footed jump', 'walk with head turns', and 'stand on foam, eyes closed' items shown misfit statistics. The most difficult item was 'stand on one leg', whereas the easiest item was 'turn in full circle'. The rating scale was acceptable with all criteria. Both item and person separation indices and reliability showed acceptable values. This would indicated that each domain covers a useful range of item difficulty that is appropriate for measuring a person with a wide range of functional ability. Conclusion: The KFAB has been proven reliable, valid and an appropriate tool with which to evaluate the balance of the elderly people.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.119-128
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• 2011

Purpose: This study was done to determine the risk factors for recurrent fallers (2+falls) compared to single fallers. Methods: Participants were 104 community-dwelling people 65 yr of age or older. The data were collected from June 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009 using the Residential Assessment Instrument-Home Care. Results: Over the past 90 days, 55.7% of the 104 participants fell once, and 44.2% experienced recurrent falls (2+falls). In comparison of recurrent fallers with single fallers, there were significant differences in scores on the following factors: gender ($X^2$=4.22, p=.040), age ($X^2$=5.74, p=.017), educational level ($X^2$=5.22, p=.022), living arrangements ($X^2$=35.02, p<.001), cardiovascular diseases ($X^2$=17.10, p<.001), hypertension ($X^2$=4.43, p=.035), diabetes mellitus ($X^2$=4.44, p=.035), glaucoma ($X^2$=13.95, p<.001), Minimal Data Set (MDS)-Pain (t=-2.56, p=.012), fear of falling ($X^2$=4.08, p=.034), reduced vision (t=-3.06, p=.003), MDS-activity of daily living (t=3.46, p=.001), MDS-Instrumental Activities of daily living (t=3.24, p=.002), cognition (MDS-Cognition Performance Scale) (t=3.40, p=.001), and 'difficulties entering and leaving the house' ($X^2$=4.53, p=.033). Conclusion: It is important to assess the risk factors for recurrent falls and develop differentiated strategies that will help prevent recurrent falls. Additionally, utilizing a standardized tool, such as RAI-HC, would help health professionals assess multi-variate fall risk factors to facilitate comparisons of different community care settings.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.452-458
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• 2016

This is a descriptive study on visiting caregivers' perception of restraint use. Data were collected from 113 caregivers working at long-term facilities using a structured questionnaire from Feb to March 2016. The caregivers' perception of restraint use was the medium score. The items they considered the most important reasons for the restraints was "Protecting an older person from falling out of bed", which was primarily intended to prevent accidents of the elderly. The score of the knowledge of restraint use was 11.23 points out of 18 and those affected were more than 50 years of age. The attitude score to the use restraints was 9.19, and caregivers thought it should be possible to refrain from using restraints. Work experience of 3 years or less were higher. The perception of using restraints is affected by the knowledge and attitudes of restraint use. This is very important for the elderly in long-term care facilities and is related to health and human rights. Therefore, it is important to provide continuous education related to the use of restraints and regulations on their management.

• Physical Therapy Rehabilitation Science
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.22-27
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• 2012

Objective: Falls are defined as contact of the body with the floor after losing balance during activities of daily living. Falls commonly occur among the elderly, and stroke patients in particular are at a high risk of falling. The purpose of this study was to investigate the changes of temporal and spatial gait parameters and gait symmetry according to experience falls in post-stroke patients. Design: Cross-sectional study. Methods: Fifty three patients with stroke were recruited on a voluntary basis from the rehabilitation unit, who currently undergoing physical therapy. All participants were asked to answer questions regarding the frequency of falls in the past 1 year. Fifty-three patients with stroke were allocated 2 groups according to experienced falls: stroke with falls (n=26) during past 1 year and stroke without falls (n=27). The spatial and temporal gait parameters and gait symmetry ratio were measured using GAITRite system. Results: The spatial gait parameters and the temporal gait parameters were significantly different between the stroke with falls group and the stroke without falls group (p<0.05). Furthermore, step length was the only significantly different among symmetry ratio (p<0.05). Conclusions: Experience of falls can lead to impairment of gait ability in stroke patients. This result is expected to be used as a basic data for rehabilitation program development to prevent a fall of post-stroke patients.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.24 no.1 s.190
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• pp.85-92
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• 2007

In the present study, three-dimensional motion analyses were performed to determine biomechanics of the lower extremity in unexpected missing foot steps for ten healthy young volunteers. In unexpected missing foot steps, the whole plantar surface of the foot or the heel contacted to the ground. A rapid ankle dorsiflexion was found right after missing foot steps and an increased plantarflexion moment was noted during loading response. After the unexpected situation, the breaking force increased rapidly. At this time, both tibialis anterior and soleus were simultaneously activated. Moreover, the range of motion at ankle, knee and hip significantly decreased during stance. In pre-swing, rectus femoris and biceps femoris prevented the collapse of the lower limbs. During late stance, propulsive forces decreased and thus, both plantarflexion moment and power generation were significantly reduced. On the opposite side, hip extension and pelvic upward motion during terminal swing were significant. Due to the shortened pre-swing, the energy generation at the ankle to push sufficiently off the ground was greatly reduced. This preliminary study would be helpful to understand the biomechanics of unexpected dynamic perturbations and valuable to prevent frequent falling of the elderly and patients with gait disorders.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers P
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• v.60 no.3
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• pp.110-113
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• 2011

Platform Screen Door, PSD, is a device that seeks to prevent accidents with regards to falling off the platform and getting trapped between the trains, achieve improvements on the cleanliness of the air, address the accessibility issue of the disabled and the elderly and provide fresher environment on the platform in general. This is achieved by preventing health hazards and accidents from occurring through installation of fixed and moving doors between rail, tram and subway platforms and the railway. Domestic firms have achieved domestic production to a large degree in various Control Units including the Overall Control Unit and RF devices through investments in technology. Despite this, full domestic production of the core of the PSD system, Door Control Unit, DCU, is not yet achieved, having to install PSDs in a relatively short period of time. Currently, controllers with DC motors are developed for installation or one is faced with having to import foreign produced controllers. In this research, the control unit prototype using the BLDC motor was domestically produced. The performance of the control unit was rigorously tested through installation on Eun-Ha Rail on Wol-Mi Island.

• Perspectives in Nursing Science
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.73-89
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• 2006

Complementary and alternative medicine has gained popularity and respectability in recent years in the United States. Since aging is often associated with chronic health conditions that commonly lead to physical and psychosocial disabilities (e.g., depression, functional and/or cognitive disabilities, and decreased quality of life), older adults often seek options to maintain health and treat chronic conditions as an adjunct to conventional medical care. Herbal products, the most commonly used among various complementary and alternative medicines (CAM), should be used with caution due to potential herbal-drug interactions (related to polypharmacy) and herbal-disease interactions (related to comorbidities). Five of the most common chronic conditions in older adults are chronic pain, cardiovascular problems, hypertension, diabetes, and chronic lung problems. A high rate of falls or risk of falling is also a problem unique to this older population. For these conditions, only a few types of CAM (e.g., acupuncture, qi gong, tai chi) were tested, with promising results. However, in spite of evidence supporting the use of certain types of CAM to alleviate some common chronic conditions, findings are limited in terms of other types of CAM tested and both short and long-term effects. More rigorous clinical trials of various CAM types are thus warranted to advance scientific knowledge and establish evidence-based practices to care for the growing number of older adults who deserve to have a better quality of life.

• Korean Journal of Applied Biomechanics
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.261-266
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• 2010

Human body is hard to be in perfect balance during walking. Most of time the trunk is supported by one leg and the center of mass(COM) falls to the contralateral side. Thus, dynamic variables such as the velocity of the COM should be considered when gait stability is evaluated. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the extrapolated center of mass(XCom) which utilized the COM position and its velocity, is appropriate to evaluate gait stability. Ten healthy adults participated in this study and performed 3 different types of gaits(normal(NG), hands on waists(HWG), and hands on shoulders(HSG)) onto 4 different types of obstacle(obstacle height: 0%, 30%, 40% and 50% of leg length). Medio-lateral Com-CoP and XCom-CoP inclination angle were calculated during support phase. For all condition, greater M-L XCoM-CoP inclination angles were found(p<.05) compared with those of matched obstacle height CoM-CoP. Especially, M-L XCoM-CoP inclination angle at 50% height revealed the best condition for monitoring dynamic stability. Significantly increased in M-L XCoM-CoP inclination angle was found(p<.05) as obstacle height increased on NG and HWG.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.382-390
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• 2018

A major accident occurring on the bed is falls that occur during at times when the care of nurses or protectors is inadequate, which is fatal to patients or the elderly. In particular, Enuresis or sleepiness caused by sleep apnea increases the risk of falls. Therefore, it is very important to detect falls and sleep apnea of patients without infringing privacy in the bed to patient's safety and accident prevention. In this paper, we reviewed the technologies developed for bed monitoring and implemented a non-intrusive monitoring system. The Occupancy Sensor allows the temperature of the bed and surrounding area to be extracted to enable track of the patient's motion. The Doppler Radar detects the patient's movements at normal times and the respiration state when patients have no movement during sleeping. It is specially designed for real-time monitoring of falling and respiration during sleeping through contactless multi-sensing while solving patient's privacy problems.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.47-53
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• 2015

Fall-related injuries in elderly people are a major health care problem. This paper introduces determination of fall direction before impact using support vector machine (SVM). Once a falling phase is detected, dynamic characteristic parameters measured by the accelerometer and gyroscope and then processed by a Kalman filter are used in the SVM to determine the fall directions, i.e., forward (F), backward (B), rightward (R), and leftward (L). This paper compares the determination sensitivities according to the selected parameters for the SVM (velocities, tilt angles, vs. accelerations) and sensor attachment locations (waist vs. chest) with regards to the binary classification (i.e., F vs. B and R vs. L) and the multi-class classification (i.e., F, B, R, vs. L). Based on the velocity of waist which was superior to other parameters, the SVM in the binary case achieved 100% sensitivities for both F vs. B and R vs. L, while the SVM in the multi-class case achieved the sensitivities of F 93.8%, B 91.3%, R 62.3%, and L 63.6%.