Effect of vestibular rehabilitation in elder people: regarding balance, quality of life and perception

The current concerns with quality of life, population aging, limitations imposed by balance disturbance in the elder population and the alternative treatment through the vestibular rehabilitation had justified this study. The objective was to analyze in perspective the application of the Cawtome & Cooksey protocol for vestibular rehabilitation results in aged institutionalized people with complains of balance alterations and probability of fall, aiming the improvement of quality of life and that elders could perceive the limitations imposed by the balance disturbance. A hybrid methodology was used, searching an integration of quantitative and qualitative data associating the experimental to the phenomenological in a population of 30 elders with complains of balance alterations living in an asylum. The evaluation instruments had been the Berg Scale, Dizziness Handicap Inventory (DHI) and speech analysis. As conclusion, it was evidenced that, within the population studied, the vestibular rehabilitation was effective regarding the improvement of symptoms of balance alteration in relation to quality of life, probability of fall as well as the security and independence feelings of the elders.