Postural stability in a population of dancers, healthy non-dancers, and vestibular neuritis patients

Abstract

Introduction: Several studies have indicated better balance control in dancers than in control participants, but some controversy remains. The aim of our study is to evaluate the postural stability in a cohort of dancers, non-dancers, compensated, and non-compensated unilateral vestibular neuritis (VN).

Methods: This is a prospective study of control subjects, dancers, and VN patients between June 2009 and December 2015. Dancers from the Dance Conservatory of Madrid and VN patients were referred to our department for analysis. After the clinical history, neuro-otological examination, audiogram, and caloric tests, the diagnosis was done. Results from clinical examination were used for the categorization of compensation situation. A computerized dynamic posturography was performed to every subject.

Results: Forty dancers and 38 women formed both ‘dancer’ and ‘normal’ cohorts. Forty-two compensated and 39 uncompensated patients formed both ‘compensated’ and ‘uncompensated’ cohorts. Dancers had significantly greater antero-posterior (AP) body sway than controls during condition 5 and 6 in the Sensory Organization Test (SOT) (p < .05). When we compared the uncompensated cohort with both control and dancers groups, we found significant greater body sway in every SOT studied condition (p < .05). While mean AP body say in SOT 5 and 6, showed greater values in compensated patients than the control group, the mean analysis did not show any statistical difference between the compensated and dancer groups, in such SOT conditions.

Conclusions: Dancers demonstrated greater sways than non-dancers when they relied their postural control on vestibular input alone. Compensated patients had a similar posturographic pattern that the dancers cohort, suggesting a similar shift from visual to somatosensory information.

Chinese abstract

简介：若干项研究表明, 舞蹈者的平衡控制比对照组更好； 然而, 对此仍有一些争议。我们研究的目的是评估舞蹈者、非舞蹈者, 补偿和无补偿的单侧前庭神经炎（VN）患者的体姿稳定性。

方法：这是2009年6月至2015年12月期间进行的对控制组、舞蹈者和VN患者的前瞻性研究。马德里舞蹈学院的舞蹈者和VN患者被介绍到我们部门接受分析。经过临床病史、神经-耳科检查、听力检查和卡路里检测, 对他们进行了诊断。临床检查结果用于补偿情况分类。对每个受试者进行了电脑动态姿态成像。

结果：四十名舞蹈者和三十八名女性组成”舞者”组和”正常”组。 42名补偿的和39名无补偿患者组成”补偿”和”无补偿”组。在感觉组织测试（SOT）中, 舞蹈者在病情5和6期间具有比对照组更大的前后向（AP）身体摆动幅度（p <.05）。当我们将无补偿组与控制组和舞蹈组进行比较时, 我们发现在每个所研究的SOT条件下, 身体的摆动幅度显著增大（p <.05）。虽然平均AP身体, 比如SOT 5和6, 显示补偿患者的值比对照组更大, 平均分析并没有显示出, 在这样的SOT条件下, 补偿组和舞蹈组之间的统计学差异。

结论：当他们的姿势控制只依靠前庭输入时, 舞蹈者表现出比非舞蹈者更大的摇摆幅度。补偿患者具有与舞蹈者组相似的姿态成像模式, 表明从视觉到体感信息的类似转变。

Keywords:

• Balance
• dance
• vertigo
• dynamic posturography

Disclosure statement

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.