A home-based exercise program focused on proprioception to reduce falls in frail and pre-frail community-dwelling...

Frailty and falls are closely associated with each other as well as with disability, hospitalization, and death. Exercise can reduce these risks in both robust and frail older people. This before-after, non-randomized intervention study assessed a one-year proprioception training program with individual daily home exercises in 564 community-dwelling people aged 70 years and over, with different frailty phenotypes. After the exercise program, we observed a moderate reduction in the mean number of falls, fear of falls, body mass index and body fat percentage in frail and pre-frail participants. These results suggest that a home proprioception program may be a viable alternative to complex multicomponent exercise programs in settings where these are not feasible, since home proprioception can reach a larger population at a lower cost, and it affords clear benefits.