Background
For the elderly, the reduction of motor function is natural phenomena, but requires a variety of concerns about how to slow down the rate of decline. Therefore, it is necessary to expand the exercise facilities or welfare facilities for the elderly, but the reality is suffering from space, cost problem and compliance. In the case of elderly people, the social exercise and the medical exercise therapy should be distinguished, but the boundary is usually ambiguous. Furthermore, exercise for the elderly, whether preventive or therapeutic, should be provided as a public service, but this is also difficult. So we tried to approach exercise therapy for improvement of elderly physical function such as walking, balance and flexibility etc. through gamification exercise equipment (Men&Tel, Korea, Balpro110, Model No. SBT 110).
Methods
This study is a multicenter randomized controlled trial. The elderly between 60 and 85 years of age were divided into 20 people conventional exercise group (group 1) and 20 people Balpro110 group (Group 2). Both group were trained for 8 weeks (30 minutes/3 times/week) and the functional assessment was evaluated before starting of training(pre-evaluation), after training of 8 weeks and after 4 weeks of rest.
Results
There were functional improvements in both Group. After 8 weeks of training, five time sit-to-standing test, berg balance score, timed-up and go test and 10 meter walking test and KFES-I(Korean version of falls efficacy scale-international) were statistically significantly improved (Table 1).
Although there were no significant differences in between groups in the pre-evaluation, 8weeks, 12weeks. There was no significant statistical difference but showed a tendency to increase further in group 2 than group 1. In addition, when comparing the results of functional assessment after 8 weeks of training and after 4weeks of rest, group 2 showed a tendency for the training effect to persist (Figure 1).
Conclusion
The results of this study suggest that the information technology convergence gamification device will be a supplementary tool for the exercise of the next generation elderly population and at the same time provide an opportunity to think about the future direction. |
