Which is More Challenging: Stairs or Slopes?

People Involved: Dr. James Wakeling, Dr. Courtney Pollock & Erina Cho from SFU and Barber Prosthetics Clinic

Fun Fact: This study provided very preliminary information that stairs are more challenging than ramps and gravel.  

Falls and fear of falling remain to be a common problem amongst people with lower-limb amputations, especially those with amputations at higher levels. While we can physically evaluate someone’s balance, it is also important to understand how psychology impacts someone’s ability to maintain their balance and mobility. Traditionally, to evaluate psychological characteristics, such as balance confidence and fear of falling, self-reported surveys have been used.   

This study looked to evaluate an entirely new way of measuring balance in this population. Just say “It explored whether measuring Electrodermal Activity, a measure of skin-conductance that infers physiological arousal, could be used as an alternative or additional tool for better understanding the effects of psychology on mobility and balance performance in individuals with transfemoral amputations. 

This study successfully demonstrated that using this technology in community walking is possible.  It also found that individuals with lower limb loss experienced mor physiological arousal during stairs than when walking on a paved incline or gravel decline showing that stairs might be the most challenging of these three obstacles.  This was just a preliminary study, but pioneers research into a new direction.

For more information, you can see our results here: Mapping of electrodermal activity (EDA) during outdoor community-level mobility tasks in individuals with lower-limb amputation - Erina Cho, James M Wakeling, Brittany Pousett, Courtney L Pollock, 2021 (sagepub.com)