Two outliers in the meta-regression, with lower Berg inhibitors balance Scale scores than expected for their age, were the treatment and control groups from a study that included only healthy sedentary elderly,6 suggesting that sedentary elderly might have poorer balance than active elderly. Two other outliers in the meta-regression, with higher Berg Balance Scale than expected for age, were cohorts

from studies that included only participants Selleckchem Ku-0059436 without a history of hip or knee joint replacement surgery.10 and 15 We can speculate that patients with a history of hip or knee replacement differ from other subjects for several reasons: they are more likely to have a history of arthritis; reduced physical activity following surgery might affect the long-term balance of some people; surgery might involve loss of proprioception at the affected joint; and patients with a history of hip replacement may be more likely to have a history of falls. For these reasons, the finding that studies excluding patients with history of hip or knee replacement find a higher Berg Balance Scale than studies including such patients is unsurprising. With the exception of the outliers

discussed above, all the samples included in this review reported mean Berg Balance Scale scores within 2.3 points of the line of best fit. Given that the Berg Balance Scale is scored from 0 to 58, this suggests that there is relatively little heterogeneity within the studies considered by this review. Random sampling error appears to explain at least some of this heterogeneity, AZD6244 molecular weight particularly among studies with a small sample size and high variability (displayed in figure as a small circle). The small amount of heterogeneity also suggests that the balance of healthy, community-dwelling elderly, as measured by the Berg Balance Scale, is similar in all countries where studies included in the review have been conducted. This review provides an important perspective on the normal values of the Berg Balance Scale. It demonstrates that with increasing age, Berg Balance Scale

scores of healthy, community-dwelling people become more variable. Some people retain good balance, with very high Berg Balance Scale scores into very old age, while some demonstrate very large deficits in nearly balance. The increasing standard deviation of the Berg Balance Scale scores with age suggests that trials involving very old but otherwise unselected participants will require larger sample sizes to allow for the greater variability compared to trials in younger participants. Alternatively, at the expense of external validity and ease of recruitment, researchers could select very old participants with a specific degree of balance deficit. Clinicians accustomed to working with balance-impaired people may easily underestimate normal balance values of healthy elderly on the basis of their experience with balance-impaired people and fail to set adequate treatment goals for their patients to attain optimal balance.