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Updated: Apr 16, 2026
Clinical Assessment of Spatiotemporal Gait Parameters in Patients and Older Adults
Published on: November 7, 2014
Multiple modes of assessment of gait are better than one to predict incident falls
Gilles Allali1, Emmeline I Ayers2, Joe Verghese2
1Department of Neurology, Division of Cognitive & Motor Aging, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University, Bronx, NY, USA; Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Geneva University Hospitals and University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
Background:
Though gait evaluation is recommended as a core component of fall risk assessments, a systematic examination of the predictive validity of different modes of gait assessments for falls is lacking.
Objective:
To compare three commonly employed gait assessments - self-reported walking difficulties, clinical evaluation, and quantitative gait - to predict incident falls.
Materials And Methods:
380 community-dwelling older adults (mean age 76.5 ± 6.8 y, 55.8% female) were evaluated with three independent gait assessment modes: patient-centered, quantitative, and clinician-diagnosed. The association of these three gait assessment modes with incident falls was examined using Cox proportional hazards models.
Results:
23.2% of participants self-reported walking difficulties, 15.5% had slow gait, and 48.4% clinical gait abnormalities. 30.3% had abnormalities on only one assessment, whereas only 6.3% had abnormalities on all three. Over a mean follow-up of 24.2 months, 137 participants (36.1%) fell. Those with at least two abnormal gait assessments presented an increased risk of incident falls (hazard ratio (HR): 1.61, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.04-2.49) in comparison to the 169 participants without any abnormalities on any of the three assessments.
Conclusions:
Multiple modes of gait evaluation provide a more comprehensive mobility assessment than only one assessment alone, and better identify incident falls in older adults.
