Fall Risk Assessment in Older Adults with Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy

Diabetic peripheral neuropathy DPN is the most frequent complication with people with diabetes and affects approximately half of this population. This is reflected in the reduction of the transmission of vibratory sensitivity, proprioceptive and of reflexes osteotendinous, affecting sensory and motor skills. People with DPN are up to 23 times more likely to have falls and 15 times more likely to report an injury compared to healthy older adults. Falls have significant consequences, such as temporary or permanent physical disability, which decreases the quality of life of the elderly and represents an increase in mortality. Therefore, a pilot study is proposed to assess the risk of falls in older adults with DPN by implementing a predictive system based on the clinical information of the AGS/BGS guidelines, the oscillation of the pressure center (CoP) at rest and the Timed up and Go test (TUG) with the use of inertial sensors. A sample of convenience of 19 participants (13 control group and 6 with DPN) older than 45 years, were cited to perform data acquisition, which were used as inputs to evaluate four fall risk classification techniques: K-means, support vector machines, K nearest neighbors and neural networks, obtaining a precision = 90.9%, sensitivity = 80% and specificity = 100%. Therefore, this study suggests that it is possible to evaluate the risk of falls in older adults with DPN through the clinical information of the AGS/BGS guidelines, the oscillation of the CoP at rest and the TUG test with the use of inertial sensors and it also has the potential to be implemented in future studies with larger populations.