Assessment of balance disorders

Abstract

The concept that “not all balance disorders are the same” well express the complexity of balance control, from which derives that the wide variety of balance problems, determining the cause of a balance disorder and what treatment options are the most appropriate, can be difficult. The fact that balance disorders can occur from a wide range of causes explains the interest from a wide variety of disciplines. This interest in the assessment of balance has led to the development of a variety of different techniques for measuring balance. It is important to take in mind that the choice of the appropriate evaluation tools depends on the disease, since the information collected from these tests does not bear the same meaning. To date, no consensus exists about which specific tools should be preferred to assess balance, especially in patients with neurological disease. However, both functional and system assessment should be considered as the two faces of the same coin to identify the presence of balance disturbances, and then to determine the underlying causes. This chapter will focus on the main approaches to the evaluation of balance disorders, briefly describing the most widely used clinical and functional scales according to the ICF framework outcomes, as well as summarizing the main instrumental approaches for the assessment.