The Investigation of Relationships Among Balance Education, Risk of Fall and Quality of Life in Elderly

The purpose of this study was to detect subjects? risk of fall over 65 years old and to evaluate both their risk of fall and quality of life before and after 2 months exercise programme. Subjects who are volunteered, were divided into experiment (n=11) and control (n=9) groups. The mean age of participants was 74,05±5,86 years old. Subjects? risk of fall, sway frequencies, fourier harmony indexes and general stabilities were measured by Tetrax Interactive Balance System. The participants? quality of life of was measured by WHOQOL-Bref and WHOQOL-OLD quastionnaires. After pre-test of all subjects, Cawthorne-Cooksey exercise programme was given to experiment group for 3 times a week, 1 hour in a session, totally for 2 months. After 2 months both groups were measured with the same posturographic tests and quality of life questionnaires. Descriptive statistics, Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test, Mann-Whitney U and Pearson correlation analysis were performed to analyze data. The level of significance was set at .05. The results of the study showed that there were statistical significance in fourier harmony index between groups in head back (HB) position, WHOQOL-Bref questionnaire in environment domain and for experiment group in WHOQOL-OLD questionnaire in social participation (p<.05). The results were further discussed and elaborated.