Influence of age on postural compensation after unilateral deafferentation due to vestibular schwannoma surgery

Abstract

Despite of age-related decline in postural control and cognitive processes, neuroplasticity allowed not only a recovery but even an improvement of balance after surgical VS removal in the elderly. This study highlights the interest of VS surgery even at a more advanced age.

Prediction of Balance Compensation After Vestibular Schwannoma Surgery

“…Indeed, the surgery-related neuroplasticity allowed not only recovery but an improvement in balance after surgical VS removal in the elderly. 4 Nevertheless, our present study using multivariate analyses revealed that age was not a critical factor in the postural outcome of VS surgery. In agreement with our result, Samii et al 24 did not observe an age effect on the surgery outcome or on the postoperative quality of life.…”

“…In a previous study using univariate analyses, patients >60 years old had better postural compensation compared with patients <60 years old. 4 The age-related decline in postural control and cognitive processes did not impair the postural compensation mechanisms. Indeed, the surgery-related neuroplasticity allowed not only recovery but an improvement in balance after surgical VS removal in the elderly.…”

“…2,3 Some preoperative individual and VS-related characteristics are known to modify the classical time course of postural compensation, such as age, tumor stage, preoperative preference for visual cues to control balance, preoperative vestibular pattern, and physical activity (PA). [4][5][6][7][8][9] Among these, some play a positive or negative role on balance performance at a given evaluation stage, whereas others modify the time course of balance performance. Although these characteristics that influence postural control after VS surgery have been clearly identified, the weight of each, not in isolation but in the general mapping of the patient, remains unknown.…”

The Cognitive-Vestibular Compensation Hypothesis: How Cognitive Impairments Might Be the Cost of Coping With Compensation

“…These dimensions can be measured with specific questionnaires (Lacroix et al, 2016). Although several premorbid patient characteristics such as age (Gauchard et al, 2012); psychological factors (Yardley and Redfern, 2001); illness perception and coping strategies (Ribeyre et al, 2016); or the level of physical activity (Gauchard et al, 2013) seem to play a role in the recovery process, the way these different variables interact remains largely unknown.…”

Preoperative balance control compensation in patients with a vestibular schwannoma: Does tumor size matter?

“…Indeed, individual characteristics, such as age (Gauchard et al, 2012), preoperative preference of visual cues to control balance (Parietti-Winkler et al, 2008), preoperative practice of physical activities (Gauchard et al, 2001;Gauchard et al, 2013), and/or VS-related characteristics, such as origin of the tumor on the vestibular nerve (Gouveris et al, 2006;Borgmann et al, 2011) and preoperative vestibular pattern (Parietti-Winkler et al, 2011) can have a positive or negative impact on balance performances at a given postoperative evaluation stage. For example, Parietti-Winkler et al (2011) revealed that patients with preoperative vestibular areflexy did not display postural performance degradation just after surgery and showed a large improvement in postural performances three months after surgery, in contrast to patients with vestibular normoreflexy who followed the classic postural performance kinetics.…”