Study and Analysis of Biomechanical Parameters of Human Movement Based on Disability Indicators in Older Adults

Older adults develop modifications in the execution of movement that lead to impairments in activities of daily living performance. Accordingly, there is a need for technological advances in devices that assist older adults targeting improvements in parameters of movement performance that have the highest impact on the skills of daily living. Therefore, to gather the parameters of movement impacting daily living activities, the main goal of this study is to perform a comparative analysis of the biomechanical movement parameters between older adults with and without disability, performing the tasks: gait, sit-to-stand, timed up and go, quiet standing and climb and descend stairs.This work was supported by theFundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), [grant number 2020.05356.BD] and through R&D Units funding [UIDB/05210/2020], Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), Portugal and the European Union.

Inclusion Criteria:older adults, 60 years or over;community-dwelling;able to perform the tasks (gait, sit-to-stand, climb and descend stairs) independently;Exclusion Criteria:older adults who are institutionalized;older adults who have established diagnosis of malignancy or terminal diseases with an anticipated survival of less than 1 year;older adults who have stroke history, cerebral hemorrhage, head trauma, or Parkinson's disease;older adults who have cognitive impairment, specifically Mini Mental State Examination (Portuguese version) score of 22 for 0 to 2 years of literacy, 24 for 3 to 6 years of literacy and 27 for more than 6 years of literacy (Morgado et al., 2009);older adults who have rheumatic pathologies that interfere with the tasks performance;older adults who have diabetic foot, lower limb fracture less than 6 weeks, or other related conditions;older adults who have unstable cardiovascular disease, liver or renal function failure;older adults who have a body mass index greater than or equal to 30 kg/m2;older adults who vestibular and/or audition or vision impairments non corrected that influence the performance of tasks;older adults who presence of symptoms at the time of evaluation that influences the participant performance of tasks.