Postural instability years after stroke

Background: Following a stroke, balance disturbances often persist despite full recovery of the paretic side. Aims: The aims were to determine how long postural instability could be detected after stroke and the differences in post-stroke patients under and above 65 years of age. Methods: Static and dynamic posturography (passing weights from hand to hand around the body) measurements were performed on 29 patients with stroke after 3 +/- 2.4 years ( 65 years) and 4.7 +/- 3.3 years. ( 65 years) compared with 38 controls. Results: Only the pathway and the velocity assessed by dynamic posturography were significantly higher (p < 0.05) in the younger group of patients compared with the controls. The older group of patients had significantly elevated parameters measured by both static (p < 0.01) and dynamic posturography (p < 0.05). Conclusions: we conclude, using a sensitive and reproducible method to assess both static and dynamic adjustments to maintain balance, that postural instability is significantly greater in post-stroke patients than control subjects. This difference is demonstrable up to 4 years after stroke, despite full recovery of the affected side. (c) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)