Usefulness of an unstable board balance test to accurately identify community-dwelling elderly individuals with a history of falls.

Objective: To determine the usefulness of an unstable board balance test in identifying a fall history among high-functioning community-dwelling elderly individuals. Design: Case-control study. Subjects: Sixty-one community-dwelling elderly aged >= 65 years and having the capacity to walk independently without an assistive device. Methods: Subjects completed 3 balance performance tests: the Unstable Board Balance Test, Functional Reach Test, and Timed Up and Go. For analysis, subjects were classified as fallers or non-fallers based on the history of falls over the previous year, and performance outcomes were compared between the 2 groups. Subjects classified as fallers were then matched 1:1 with non-fallers (for sex, age, body weight and height), and the optimal cut-off score and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) for each test were calculated. Results: Functional reach test and Timed Up and Go did not reliably discriminate between fallers and non-fallers. In contrast, the score on the unstable board balance test was significantly different between the 2 groups (p = 0.040). Among all 3 tests, AUC was largest for the unstable board balance test (0.78), with superior sensitivity (0.67) and specificity (0.87). Conclusion: For high-functioning elderly subjects, the unstable board balance test was useful in discriminating between falters and non-fallers.