Equilíbrio e postura em deficientes visuais / Balance and posture on visually impairment

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2010

RESUMO

The human body is kept in balance by a process involving three types of information, visual, vestibular and proprioceptive. From the moment lose one of the three systems, where the vision, there is a loss of functional mechanisms involved in the balance. In this context, blind individuals have a greater displacement of the center of pressure (COP) that individuals sights. Thus, this study aims to characterize the posture and static and functional balance in subjects with and without visual impairment. The study was composed of 9 blind subjects with a mean age of 29 6 years and 14 sighted individuals with a mean age of 27 4 years. The subjects underwent assessment of the balance by the force platform developed by the Laboratory of Instrumentation at the Santa Catarina State University, Berg Balance Scale (BBS), International Scale Effectiveness of Falls (EIEQ) and postural evaluation by SAPO software. The data were processed in SPSS version 17.0 by the Shapiro Wilk s test, "t" test for independent samples and Mann-Whitney U, with significance set at p <0.05 The results showed no significant difference in scores between BBS blind individuals (50.6 3.21) and sights (56 points). As for EIEQ, again no significant difference was found between the scores obtained by blind individuals (25.7 8.66) and visionaries (20.1 5.1 points). In the eye-open condition Force plataform balance measure showed significant difference in center of pressure in the anterior-posterior direction (COP AP) among the blind (1.36 1.7 mm) and sights (1.19 1.7 mm) subjects. The results obtained in the body posture analysis showed no significant difference in angular variables except the angle of the front limb (anterior view), horizontal alignment of the head and vertical alignment of the body (side right), vertical alignment of the head, alignment vertical of the trunk and of the ankle in the (left lateral side). The results showed similar functional balance between blind and sighted subjects, however, the scales used in this study are not specific for the blind, becoming evident, therefore, that there is a need to adapt in this population mainly in the BBS. Regarding to the static balance the blind showed greater variation in COP in the AP direction. This may be due to the corporal strategies adopted by this population due to lack visual in order to maintain body balance. Finally, the postural characteristics of blind subjects showed that has an attitude characterized by the head forward, protruding shoulder, posterior inclination of trunk and knee valgus.

ASSUNTO(S)

blind postura balance equilíbrio educacao fisica deficiência visual posture

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