Author(s): RUSSO, L., POLI, L., PONTI, M., MOLINARO, L., CENTRONE, C., FISCHETTI, F., Institution: ECAMPUS UNIVERSITY: UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI ECAMPUS, Country: ITALY, Abstract-ID: 1933

INTRODUCTION:
Postural stability is a global health key factor in the maintenance of upright standing balance. The most used instruments for measuring double and single-leg stability are usually platforms. In the last ten years, inertial sensors are growing up as stability measuring tool. The different technology of the inertial sensor in measuring stability requires reference data in order to use them to classify stable and unstable individuals. This study aims to show the preliminary results of a larger study for assessing reference data of stability measured through inertial sensors.
METHODS:
One hundred thirty-seven healthy volunteers (55 male and 82 female, height 165.4 ± 11.1 cm; weight 62.1 ± 15.4 kg; age 27.7 ± 14.4 yo) were recruited and tested for double and single leg stability. All subjects were right leg dominant. An inertial sensor (Beyond Inertial, Motustech, Italy) was applied on the lumbo-sacral region to assess stability, measuring sway path length (PL) and oscillation ellipse area (EA), both in open and closed eyes conditions (OE, CE respectively). Double and single leg stability tests lasted 30” and 10”, respectively. For single leg stability dominant (DL) and not-dominant (NDL) leg was tested. Preliminary data analysis involved a descriptive statistic approach with percentiles and a Student T-test for a paired and independent sample to measure significant differences. The significance level was set at P < 0.05.
RESULTS:
For the whole sample, in double legs test OE-AE was 4.2 ± 7.5 cm2 (percentiles 25th 1.3; 50th 2.2; 75th 4.1) and CE-AE was 3.6 ± 4.1 cm2 (percentiles 25th 1.2; 50th 2.2; 75th 3.9); OE-PL was 51.0 ± 30.3 cm (percentiles 25th 35.6; 50th 44.3; 75th 59.4) and CE-PL was 55.1 ± 22.2 cm (percentiles 25th 41.4; 50th 51.1; 75th 61.7). CE-PL was significantly greater respect OE-PL (p 0.017). In single leg test DL-AE was 37.9 ± 62.8 cm2 (percentiles 25th 9.2; 50th 17.4; 75th 34.1) and NDL-AE was 22.2 ± 35.6 cm2 (percentiles 25th 7.2; 50th 11.1; 75th 23.8); DL-PL was 37.2 ± 22.7 cm (percentiles 25th 24.2; 50th 31.3; 75th 41.5) and NDL-PL was 32.9 ± 17.0 cm (percentiles 25th 22.6; 50th 28.3; 75th 37.8). Both DL-AE and DL-PL were significantly greater respect NDL-AE and NDL-PL (p 0.000 and 0.001, respectively). Male showed higher values respect female for DL-PL and NDL-PL (41.9 ± 24.3 and 34.0 ± 21.0 cm p 0.044; 37.1 ± 17.6 and 30.2 ± 16.0 cm and 0.019, respectively).
CONCLUSION:
The preliminary results of this ongoing study, allow concluding that the need for reference data is high due to the significant differences between conditions and gender. The study will allow professionals and researchers to use inertial sensors to test double and single-leg stability in all that contexts where the use of stabilometric platforms is limited.