Functional Motor Assessment for MCI, Frailty, and Fallers Among Older Adults Using a Novel Point-of-Care Assessment System

Background/Objective: Mild cognitive impairment (MCI), frailty, and falls are prevalent conditions among older adults that share overlapping deficits in motor function. All have potential serious consequences, such as transition to dementia, serious injury, poor quality of life, and even death. Effective screening for these conditions is essential for diagnosis and early intervention. Instrumented motor function assessment may be an efficient solution to the limitations of traditional screening methods. The purpose of this study was to explore the motor function measures that are most impacted by MCI with exploratory subanalyses of frailty and fall history within our sample using a novel, multi-modal motor function assessment platform. Methods: Participants included 83 community-dwelling older adults classified as controls or having MCI (n = 35), frailty (n = 22), and/or falls (n = 33). Participants completed static balance, walking, sit-to-stand, step down, and reaction time tasks. Balance, walking, and sit-to-stand tests were repeated with cognitive dual tasking. Results: Individuals with MCI showed significant, large effect size differences in walking speed, sit-to-stand time, and reaction time. Individuals with frailty showed similar but nonsignificant trends. Individuals with a history of falls showed fewer, nonsignificant differences, with balance center-of-mass measures being the most distinctive. Conclusions: Our findings identified significant differences in selected instrumented motor measures between older adults with and without MCI, while exploratory analyses of frailty and fall history revealed potentially relevant but statistically nonsignificant patterns requiring confirmation in larger studies. This study identified candidate motor characteristics which can inform future work with the goal of developing objective, efficient, and low-cost screening for functional motor decline in community-dwelling older adults.