Improve elderly people's sit-to-stand ability by using new designed additional armrests attaching on the standard walker

Abstract

Background: More and more elderly problems come to our life and the elderly health care become more important. Elderly people with lower extremities weakness usually use walkers to assist in walking. Although the commercial standard walkers (N-type) can improve elderly people's walking ability, users sometimes take risk of falling when using the standard walkers to perform sit-to-stand (STS). The purpose of this study is to design an additional armrest which can be attached to a standard walker for users performing STS more easily and evaluate it with clinical assessments and a body worn sensor.

Methods: The combination of the walker and the new armrest design are referred to as a better type (B-type). Clinical assessments and a motion analysis were performed on 34 elderly people (age, 83 ± 6 y/o) with a Five Times Sit-to-Stand Test (FTSST), a satisfaction survey and an inertial measurement unit (IMU) attached to the trunk to measure the acceleration data when using B-type and N-type during STS.

Results: The FTSST result shows that the B-type can reduce about 5 s spending time of elderly people during STS and 63.7% of subjects were more satisfied on the B-type than the N-type. According to the IMU, the result reveals that the B-type can provide subjects higher peak-peak anterio-posterior acceleration, peak flexion acceleration and peak extension acceleration during STS.

Conclusion: There is a better assistance during STS when using our new armrests design combined with the commercial product which could provide larger acceleration to perform sit-to-stand.

Keywords: Acceleration; Elderly; Five times sit-to-stand test; Inertial measurement unit; Sit-to-Stand; Walker.