GENDER INFLUENCE ON BALANCE PERFORMANCES IN THE ELDERLY

This study was carried out to investigate gender influence on balance performance of apparently healthy elderly using the Sharpened Romberg Test (SRT) for static balance and the Functional Reach Test (FRT) for dynamic balance assessments. One hundred and three (103) apparently healthy male and 100 apparently healthy female elderly subjects of age ranging from 60 to 74 years participated in this study. They had no history of neurological deficits, postural hypotension, orthopaedics conditions or injury to the back and / or upper and lower extremities within the past five years. Descriptive statistics of range, means and standard deviation were used to analyze the physical characteristics and each of the two tests. The independent t-test was used to compare the balance performances in elderly males and females. The results showed that males performed significantly higher than females in FRT: (31.46 +/- 12.34) and (24.00 +/- 10.73) respectively. Males performed significantly higher than females in SRT in eyes opened (58.51 +/- 4.43) and (56.58 +/- 6.03) and eyes closed: (46.98 +/- 14.89) and (42.59 +/- 14.70) performances respectively. It was concluded that males performed significantly better than females in both static and dynamic balance performances.