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[P1–331]: CONTINUOUS MONITORING OF TURNING MOBILITY IN PATIENTS WITH ALZHEIMER's DISEASE: A PILOT STUDY
Author(s) -
Agrawal Yuri,
Oh Esther S.,
Mancini Martina
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
alzheimer's and dementia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.713
H-Index - 118
eISSN - 1552-5279
pISSN - 1552-5260
DOI - 10.1016/j.jalz.2017.06.347
Subject(s) - cognition , medicine , physical medicine and rehabilitation , cognitive impairment , activities of daily living , alzheimer's disease , orientation (vector space) , disease , audiology , physical therapy , psychiatry , geometry , mathematics
Background:Patients with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) frequently have impairments with spatial orientation and navigation. These deficits in spatial cognition are thought to contribute to the increased risk of falls and wandering in AD, which are highly morbid conditions for these patients. Recent studies using continuous activity monitoring in cognitively-normal older adults observed that reduced spatial cognitive skills was associated with poorer turning mobility. The goal of this study was to investigate the preliminary feasibility of continuous monitoring of turning mobility in AD patients, with the broader goal of developing an objective measure of spatial cognitive skills in AD patients.Methods:We recruited four AD patients into the study. The patients wore an Opal sensor (APDM, Portland, OR) on a belt on the lower back during normal daily activity and were instructed to wear the device for 4 consecutive days. An algorithm identified periods of walking from the 3D accelerations (>10 sec) and calculated the following turning metrics that occurred while walking: 1) number of turns occurring in each 30 min period, 2) turn angle amplitudes, 3) turn durations, 4) turn velocities (mean and peak). Results:We were able to successfully record from all 4 patients (mean age 77.3 years, 75% male, MMSE range 13-24). The number of days of use ranged from 2-5 days, and the number of hours of use ranged from 16.545.5 hours. Data on turning mobility were generated for all 4 patients. The only quantity that differed substantially between data from healthy older adults and theAD patients wasmean turn anglewhichwas higher in the older adults (96 vs. 75 ). Conclusions:In this pilot study, AD patients (even with anMMSE of 13) tolerated the Opal continuous monitoring device and provided evaluable data on turning mobility. We determined that 4 days of monitoring (yielding at least 36 hours of data) would be needed to provide sufficient data for estimation of turning mobility parameters. The next steps of this study are to complete recruitment of a total of 25 patients, and evaluate whether turning mobility is associatedwithMMSE and spatial cognition inADpatients.