Health TrialsbyHealthPanel

Understanding Dance for Falls Prevention

ConditionsOlder Adults (65 Years and Older)GeriatricRehabilitation
Trial statusNot yet recruiting
Trial phaseNot listed
Trial typeObservational
Biological sexAll
Age65+
SponsorGuy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust

About this trial

Falls are common among older adults, and can lead to both physical and emotional problems. The new World Falls Guidelines suggest that falls prevention programmes should take into account a person's individual priorities and beliefs.

At the Older Persons Assessment Unit (OPAU), physiotherapy focuses on helping patients improve their abilities to do everyday tasks and enhancing their quality of life. Personalised treatment is offered to make sure it's as effective and long-lasting as possible.

One of the main programmes run in the department is a class designed to improve strength and balance, but even people who complete these classes often struggle to stick to exercise when the classes end.

Dance classes are a fun, creative, and social way to exercise, and OPAU has worked with Breathe Arts Health Research to explore dance as a treatment for older adults at risk of falls. So far, the results show that people who chose dance for strength and balance saw the same physical benefits as those who did the more traditional strength and balance exercises, but this evidence on its own isn't enough to widely recommend dance as a way to lower falls risk.

To build stronger evidence for dance as a safe and effective activity for reducing fall risks, this project will explore how participants and dance instructors feel about the programme. It will also look at the different exercises in the dance sessions to understand what works best to help improve strength and balance and reduce the risk of falling.

Eligibility criteria

This trial does not accept healthy volunteers

Qualifiers

Consecutive patients referred to the SABG following initial assessment by a physiotherapist

And are found to have a strength and/or balance impairment

And are deemed appropriate for group exercise intervention

And are able and willing to be interviewed and recorded, with or without a family member or carer to support with language or cognition limitations

Disqualifiers

• Patients (or proxy carer) that do not provide written consent to be interviewed and recorded for the purposes of the study

Or who are unable to follow a supervised exercise programme or take part in a group exercise class (defined by the need for hands on assistance, this will be determined at the initial physical assessment by the physiotherapist)

Or who are unable to follow instructions and taken part in conversational English to a sufficient level to be able to participate in a group exercise class (either independently or with a carer)

Trial population

Patient participants will be recruited from patients referred to the outpatient physiotherapy service at the Older Persons Assessment Unit (OPAU) at Guy's \& St Thomas' NHS Trust (GSTT).

Trial design

Design model

Cohort

Time perspective

Prospective

Treatments tested in this trial

  • Dance

    Other intervention

    Supervised dance targeting strength and balance improvements

  • Resistance exercise

    Other intervention

    Supervised resistance exercise targeting strength and balance improvements in older adults

Treatment groups

23 Participants
are divided into 1 treatment group
Group A: older adults2 interventions

Trial outcomes

Primary outcomes

1

Semi-structured survey responses

Custom questionnaire comprising 12 textual short answer questions, 2 dichotomous response questions and 3 multi-category response questions. These questionnaires are to explore participant perceptions around dance and traditional strength and balance exercise classes.

Time frame
Baseline
2

Textual data from focus group

Transcribed focus group session with dance class participants to explore the perceptions of mechanism of action, barriers and facilitators of dance as a falls risk reduction method.

Time frame
To study completion, average 9 months
3

Textual data from semi-structured interview

Transcribed semi-structured interview with dance instructor to explore the perceptions of mechanism of action, barriers and facilitators of dance as a falls risk reduction method, and adaptations for this specific population.

Time frame
To study completion, an average of 9 months

Secondary outcomes

1

Segmentation of class video recording into pertinent exercise events

Video footage from 3 classes (one at the beginning, one in the middle and one at the end). The sessions will be broken down into treatment events, anchored to treatment ingredients and provided a timestamp within NVivo Software. Treatment events will be further split into 90 second segments (epochs). Dependent upon duration of treatment event, 2-3 epochs will be picked across the beginning, middle and end of the epoch. 1 participant will be randomly allocated to each epoch prior to analysis.

Time frame
To study completion, average 9 months

Other outcomes

Sponsors and contacts

Click on the lead sponsor to view all of their trials.

Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust

Lead sponsor

King's College London

Collaborator

Breathe Arts Health Research

Collaborator

Source ClinicalTrials.gov

This trial is not recruiting at the moment. You can still explore other options: