Investigation of effectiveness of postural stability trainings on postural stability and activity performance on individuals with visually impaired

This study was aimed to evaluate postural stability and occupational participation in individuals with visually impaired who their visual acuity is worse than 6/60 and to examine the effect of postural stability trainings applied to them. The study included randomly chosen 34 individuals with visually impaired who applied to Hacettepe University Vocational Rehabilitation Center. The Socio-demographic Information Form, postural stability assessment with Biodex Balance System and Canada Occupational Performance Measurement (COPM) were applied. Occupation-based postural stability training intervention (Group 1, n=17) was performed for a total of 24 sessions for two sessions per week for 12 weeks, with approximately 60 minutes for each session. The Group 2 (n=17) was given postural stability training with BBS only for 24 sessions in total for two sessions per week for 12 weeks, each session about 20 minutes. The evaluations were repeated after the trainings and the results were compared. As a result of our study, a statistically significant difference was found between pre- and post-training measures in terms of postural stability values in both Group 1 and Group 2 (p<0,05). In terms of activity performance and satisfaction, it was found that there was no significant improvement in the Group 2, it was found that there was a statistically significant increase in the activity performance and satisfaction of the individuals in the Group 1 (p<0,01). Occupation-based postural stability training positively improves the level of postural stability and the performance and satisfaction levels of the activities experiencing performance problems in visually impaired individuals. Keywords: Visually Impaired, Postural Stability, Occupational Performance