Reliability of Community Ambulation Ability, Fall Risk, and Dynamic Visual Acuity Assessments in Stroke

Plain-language summary

Nearly half of individuals with stroke experience limitations in community ambulation, and 35.7% of community-dwelling stroke survivors experienced falls while walking, indicating that falls are common during routine daily activities in community settings. Patla (1999) proposed that community mobility is influenced by eight factors: ambient conditions, terrain characteristics, external physical load, attentional demands, postural transitions, traffic level, time constraints, and walking distance. This framework suggests that community ambulation requires consideration of multiple physiological domains as well as environmental factors. However, current assessments of community ambulation primarily rely on indoor walking speed as an indicator, which may be insufficient to fully evaluate patients' community ambulation ability. Previous studies have not yet established the reliability of community ambulation assessments such as the Walking Ability Questionnaire, community walking speed, and the Falls Efficacy Scale (Taiwan Chinese version)-in individuals with chronic stroke. Additionally, stroke survivors often demonstrate insufficient integration of vestibular information, which may affect gait performance through impaired dynamic visual acuity. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the reliability of community ambulation assessments and dynamic visual acuity testing in individuals with chronic stroke.

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