Can two multimodal psychomotor exercise programs improve attention, affordance perception, and balance in community dwellings at risk of falling? A randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Falls are associated with cognitive and physical function deterioration. Attention decline, inaccurate affordance perception, and balance impairment are considered to be risk factors for falls. Furthermore, few studies have reported psychomotor intervention as a fall prevention program. This study aimed to investigate the effects of two multimodal programs on attention, perceptual and stepping-forward boundaries, and balance in community-dwelling older adults at risk of falling. METHODS: Fifty-one community-dwelling older adults were recruited to participate in a 24-week randomized controlled trial. Participants (75.4 ± 5.6 years) were randomly assigned to one of three groups: the 1) multimodal psychomotor program [EG1], 2) combined program (multimodal psychomotor program + whole-body vibration program) [EG2], and 3) control group. Participants were assessed at baseline, at post-intervention, and after a 12-week no-intervention follow-up period. RESULTS: The within-group comparisons showed significant improvements in attention and balance in EG1 and EG2 after the intervention (p < 0.05). The magnitudes of the treatment effects were similar in both EGs, ranging from medium to large. Decreases in the fall rate were also observed in EG1 (− 44.2%) and EG2 (− 63.0%) (p < 0.05). During the follow-up period, these improvements in attention were maintained, while those in balance were reversed in both EGs. No significant differences between groups were found. CONCLUSIONS: These study results suggest that both multimodal exercise programs were effective for fall prevention and were well tolerated by the participants. Specifically, EG1 and EG2 showed identical improvements in attention, and EG2 presented a slightly larger enhancement in balance and a larger decrease in the fall rate. Our findings demonstrate the benefits of maintaining the psychomotor intervention program by itself or in combination with the whole-body vibration program to prevent cognitive and physical function deterioration. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:NCT03446352. Date of registration: February 26, 2018.