Ai chi therapy for the treatment of balance and prevention of falls

Abstract

Background: Alterations in balance reduce people's physical activity and their autonomy in activities of daily living, causing an increased risk of falls. Ai Chi is an aquatic therapy technique that is presented as a useful tool for improving balance, due to the specific characteristics of the movements that make up the technique and because it benefits from the physical principles offered by water.
Objectives: To assess the effects of the Ai Chi technique on balance in the elderly.
Method: We conducted a systematic review by consulting the information sources PubMed, Isi Web of Knowledge, OVID, EBSCOHost and Teseo. The terms used in the search strategy were "ai chi" and "balance", alone or combined with the Boolean operator AND. In addition, we conducted a manual literature search of the selected articles. The qualitative analysis of the level of scientific evidence was carried out using the Jadad scale.
Results: After eliminating duplicate articles and applying the selection criteria, eight results were obtained. The level of methodological evidence of the studies was generally low.
Conclusions: Treatment using the Ai Chi technique improves balance in those who practice it. In addition, it produces positive therapeutic changes in pain, quality of life and functional capacity.
Keywords: Ai Chi, balance, hydrotherapy and falls.