Falls and fall-related injuries are a major problem for elderly persons. Most falls occur during walking and turning, and the risk of falling increases when attention is diverted to something besides walking. It is often difficult to standardize methods for testing balance and fall tendency in a clinically relevant setting. We describe the development of a system using a virtual environment (VE) to assess how attention demanding and unexpected events influence a person's capacity to control balance and movement. The hardware in the system consists of a head-mounted display (HMD), a magnetic tracker system, and two SGI computers. The software consists of the image generation of the VE and the management and visualization of motion tracking data. In a preliminary pilot study eight subjects (age 23-80) participated. Each subject walked on a normal floor and was visually presented a familiar outdoor environment in the HMD. They were exposed to different unexpected events, such as a virtual snowfall and tilting of the VE. Disturbances of balance and walking patterns such as changes in speed, stride length and balance reactions like slipping were observed. Two subjects experienced symptoms of cyber sickness with a SSQ score above 25 points. Walking with sensors only did not affect walking time, but in VE the subjects generally walked more slowly. Virtual tilting of the environment had an impact on balance performance during walking. This effect was not observed while the test subjects were walking in a virtual snowfall. The model needs further development but may hold a potential for clinical use.
BACKMAN A-L, JARVINEN E. Turnover of professional drivers. Scand j work environ health 9 (1983) 36-41. The aspects of turnover were studied in a cohort of 1,597 male drivers who had joined the trade union between 1967 and 1969 and who lived in six urban municipalities in different parts of the country. The retrospective study comprised the period from 1969 to 1979. At the end of this period, 1.5 % of the cohort could not be traced, 3 % were living abroad, and 5 % were dead. An inquiry concerning occupation since 1969 was sent to 1,453 drivers (91 % of the cohort). In all, 1,156 drivers responded (80 940). A total of 69 % of the subjects who answered the questions was still employed as drivers in 1979, 24 % had turned to some other trade, 7 % had retired, and less than 1 % reported that they were out of work. The changes within the trade favored bus driving. The most common reasons for changing work were salary, the heaviness and irregularity of the work, and health. The major cause of death was accidents and other external causes, as could be expected in view of the drivers' comparatively young age in 1969 (mean age 29 years).
Falls and fractures among elderly persons constitute a major health problem. Many falls occur while walking and falls that occur during turning often result in a fracture. Methods aimed at understanding the complex mechanisms involved in walking should therefore assess tested individuals during walks and turns. In order to identify persons at risk and take the correct preventive measures, it is important to find methods that quantify movements as the tested persons are processing multisensory input. In a clinical setting this is sometimes difficult to achieve in a controlled manner, since tests are difficult to set exactly the same from one time to another. Using a virtual environment (VE) and a tracker system, conditions such as light, sound, events, body movements, and room size can be controlled and measured. Tests in VE can therefore be identically reproduced over and over again to evaluate if a person can withstand changing outer demands at any given moment. In order to perform quantitative measures 8 persons (21-74 years) were tested in immersive virtual reality. The VE was a corridor in which expected and unexpected events could be produced. Events studied were doors swinging open in front of the subjects during a walk and a virtual tilting of the environment. Trackers were used for collecting and analyzing the movement data. Our results show that the system was well tolerated among the subjects and that there was a clear tendency that the system could generate fall tendency among the subjects. There was also a difference among the subjects regarding walking strategies when subjected to the various events.
The primary goal of this research was to study the possibility of a virtual environment (VE) to influence empathy on caregiver personal. In the present explorative study, nine subjects from Norrlands University Hospital (NUS) completed a test consisting of three everyday tasks-reading a newspaper, filling a glass of water, and putting toothpaste on a toothbrush. The procedure was done twice, first from a non-stroke perspective and second, from a perspective of a patient with stroke handicaps. The VE looked like a normal apartment and could be experienced with or without different perceptual disorders of stroke. The data from interviews and observations were analyzed via methods inspired by the Grounded Theory. The results from observations and interviews indicated that the simulator, despite problems of usability, was effective in influencing the caregiver's empathy.
A health survey of granite workers in Finland: radiographic findings, respiratory function, hearing, electric sensory thresholds of the fingers and subjective symptoms. by Ahlman K, Backman AL, Partanen T Results from a health survey of 777 granite workers, exposed to quartz dust, noise and/or machine vibration, and 122 unexposed "controls" are reported. The survey included chest X-rays, pulmonary function tests, a hearing examination, the determination of the electric sensory thresholds of the fingers, and questionnaires on the subjective symptoms of the respiratory system and upper limbs. The exposed workers' radiographic findings (except for a 2.6 % rate of silicosis), respiratory functions, and sensory thresholds did not differ significantly from those of the controls. Granite drillers had a high prevalence of hearing defects. Respiratory symptoms were common among drillers and sandblasters, and subjective symptoms of the upper limbs due to vibration occurred among the granite dressing workers who used pneumatic hammers. Both primary and secondary measures of prevention are strongly recommended for the granite industry, primarily for quartz dust exposure and its health effects.
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