Assessment of Gait Speed and Timed Up and Go Measures as Predictors of Falls in Older Breast Cancer Survivors

BACKGROUND: Older breast cancer survivors are at an increased risk of loss of postural balance and accidental falls, however, the ability of clinical mobility measures to predict falls has not been determined. The purpose of this study was to examine the prognostic ability, sensitivity, and specificity to predict accidental falls in measures of gait speed and functional mobility in older breast cancer survivors. METHODS: Thirty-four breast cancer survivors 65 years and older performed 3 measures of gait speed (GS) (usual, fast, dual-task) and Timed Up and Go (TUG) (TUG, TUG-Cognitive, TUG-Manual). Follow-up calls were made 3 months after testing to track falls. RESULTS: The area under the curve (AUC) was below 0.5 for all GS measures, indicating poor predictive ability and all GS measures had low sensitivity and specificity to predict falls. All TUG measures had AUC values above 0.5. The cutoff score with the best sensitivity/specificity to predict falls was: TUG-Cognitive = 11.32 seconds, Sens = 0.64, Spec = 0.80; TUG-Manual = 9.84 seconds, Sens = 0.71, Spec = 0.65. CONCLUSION: When assessing fall risk in older breast cancer survivors, performance on the TUG and TUG-Cognitive are able to predict falls.