[01] Cristina Loureiro Chaves Soldera, Department of Speech and Audiology, Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre, Porto Alegre, Brazil. [02] Gabriela Guimaraes Oliveira, Institute of Geriatrics and Gerontology, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil. [03] Angelo Jose Goncalves Bos, Graduate Program on Biomedical Gerontology, Institute of Geriatrics and Gerontology, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Background: Aging brings body functional and structural changes, reducing vitality and increasing multimorbidity, causing changes in the balance, characterized by dizziness, vertigo, imbalance, and fall. Basically three sensory systems are involved in maintaining body balance: visual, somatosensory, and vestibular. Adequate diagnosis allows better rehabilitation planning. Most fast growing age group in Brazil and many other countries are the oldest-old (80 years and older). Objective: compare body balance maintenance systems performance between oldest-old and younger older adults. Design: observational cross-sectional analytical study. Settings: from a Worker Association and Outpatient Clinic of a University Hospital. Subjects: involved two groups: older-adults (60 to 69 years-old) and oldest-olds. Methods: Subjects responded to a socio-demographic and clinical questionnaire and Foam-Laser Dynamic Posturography to perform the Sensory Organization Test (SOT) in six different conditions, to assess the three balance systems. Results: The sample included 62 participants, 32 older-adults and 30 oldest-old (80 to 96 y.o.). We observed that the oldest-old had worse performance and greater variability than the older-adults in all SOT conditions. There were significant differences between age groups in the visual and vestibular analysis (p<0.001) and in the visual preference (p=0.007), but not in the somatosensory system (p=0.741). Conclusion: the mechanisms for maintaining body balance most affected in the older-adult and oldest-old are vestibular and visual, which were higher than expected. Otherwise, the somatosensory system did not show the difference that would be expected to arise between the age groups.

Oldest-Old, Aging, Body Balance Maintenance Systems, Dynamic Posturography

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