Live Long Walk Strong rehabilitation program for Mobility Limitation

The most common treatments for mobility limitation are physical therapy, orthotics and assistive devices, and surgical procedures. Typically, these treatments are focused on reducing pain and disability resulting from mobility limitation. Additional therapies may also be needed for more severe mobility limitations.\n

A variety of conditions can result in mobility limitation and there is no single condition that can be deemed the cause. With effective rehabilitation the potential for cure is large.

There are several physical diseases that can contribute to mobility limitation, including heart disease, low back pain, arthritis, spinal disc herniation, and arthritis. If it is not possible to attribute symptoms solely to any single disease, then many patients can be classified as having unexplained mobility limitation for their age.

This area warrants further study. There may be physical signs which indicate mobility limitation, which is related to quality of life. The best predictor of mobility limitation is physical fatigue. A physical examination may be one way that this is assessed.

The lifetime prevalence of mobility limitation of 47.6% in a community sample of elderly is a conservative estimate that may be significantly higher in individuals who have been diagnosed or treated for depressive symptoms. For example, a substantial proportion of individuals identified as having 'depressive symptoms' by their general practitioner or primary care physician may not have had a formal diagnosis of a depressive disorder (including MDD), as only a minority of such individuals will receive antidepressant treatment. The prevalence of mobility limitation may be even higher in individuals who are receiving treatment for depression due to the inclusion criteria used in clinical practice guidelines for identifying depressive disorder.

Most RCT for a treatment for mobility limitation are sponsored by a single manufacturer or commercial enterprise, which is a potential source of bias. If a clinical trial is found to be biased, its results will be invalid and can result in unproven treatments being recommended.

For people with mobility difficulty, a daily exercise program of LLW and other daily tasks reduced mobility problems, improving quality of life. The program resulted in higher rate of participation and improved compliance even for elderly subjects.

The live long walk test used in this pilot study provides valuable objective evidence of long bone strength and can be an objective test for guiding patients towards early referral for more aggressive and appropriate care.

[The primary cause of mobility limitation is not due to structural abnormalities, but to decreased functional capacity of the patient, which in turn is caused by low physical activity and sedentariness. As many other problems are responsible for low physical activity and sedentariness, these factors should be tackled at the same time as the mobility limitation problem.

There have been no trials comparing the outcomes of live long walk strong rehabilitation versus standard care or placebo control in clinical settings. The findings of this study need to be carefully viewed in light of the fact that there were patients with less disability at baseline in the live long walk group and they were more compliant than placebo patients. Recent findings underscore the need for large scale clinical trials to investigate the effects of live long walk strong rehabilitation in the context of clinical management of individuals with a disabling condition.