Abstract
to evaluate the postural balance, cognition and functional autonomy of older adults with dementia, who are long-stay inpatients, subjected to ballroom dancing. simple randomized clinical study. Older adult sample: control group (30) and experimental group (30). The groups were subjected to the protocol of functional autonomy for activities of daily living; to the assessment of cognition (mini-mental state examination); and to the analysis of postural balance (stabilometric and postural platforms). The analysis of variance with repeated measures for group and time factors, and Scheffé's post hoc test were used, with significance of p < 0.05. For the mini-mental state examination, the control group presented a 24.27 mean, and the experimental 22.75. Functional autonomy for activities of daily living - experimental: 54.47 ± 7.24 (p < 0.0001) x control: 61.77 ± 8.47 (p = 0.011). Postural balance - experimental: X = 3.16 ± 3.44 (p = 0.02) x control = X = 6.30 ± 7.62 (p = 0.04). Ballroom dancing can be recommended for older adults to provide improvement in their balance and motor performance of the activities of daily living.
Highlights
The aging process represents the loss of normal body functions from changes in cells and tissues, increasing the risk of diseases like dementia[1,2]
We observe that the older adults evaluated in this research obtained higher scores, The functional autonomy in the activities of daily living (ADL) of the participants of similar to other studies that evaluated older adults from a community this study showed significant changes (p < 0.05), and this result without reports of falls[46]
The participants evaluated did corroborates the findings of Conradsson et al[38]. These authors not show changes related to postural balance within three months, evaluated a group of older adults who were inpatients and liv- we can assume that they used strategies to maintain adequate ing in similar conditions to those from this research, they used balance in the tasks required by the tests of the scale used
Summary
The aging process represents the loss of normal body functions from changes in cells and tissues, increasing the risk of diseases like dementia[1,2]. Other deleterious effects that can be highlighted are the loss of postural balance, decrease in maximal oxygen consumption (VO2max), progressive visual loss, weight loss, dementia, among other conditions[4,5] These changes result in the reduction of the functional reserve of the sensory-motor systems involved in the mechanisms of postural, sensory, visual, somatosensory and vestibular balance, as well as reductions in the vascular tone and muscle strength, range of movements, biomechanical alignment and flexibility, and central processing[6,7,8]. This study is justified by the need to provide forms and methods to minimize the deleterious effects of aging, evidencing the positive benefits offered by physical activities, especially ballroom dancing
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