Can Backward Walking Speed Reserve Discriminate Older Adults at High Fall Risk?

The authors examine whether community-dwelling older adults at high fall risk have lower backward walking speed reserve (WSR) than their healthy counterparts. Twenty-one healthy older adults and 20 older adults at high fall risk performed five trials of forward walking at a self-selected and maximal pace. In addition, all participants walked backward at a self-selected pace, and 15 participants from each group walked backward at a maximal pace. WSR was calculated as the difference between maximal and self-selected walking speed. Comparisons between groups were made using a one-tailed independent samples t-test or Mann-Whitney U-test with an α value of 0.025. Older adults at high fall risk were significantly slower during self-selected forward walking (11.7%; p = 0.006), maximal forward walking (15.5%; p = 0.001), self-selected backward walking (25.3%; p = 0.002), and maximal backward walking (23.8%; p = 0.006). Older adults at high fall risk showed a lesser forward WSR (25.4%; p = 0.03) and backward WSR (23.7%; p = 0.03). Backward WSR is not useful for discriminating between healthy older adults and older adults at high fall risk. The results imply that forward or backward walking speed rather than WSR might be a useful measure.