NCT04359888: BATP

A Balanced Assessment and Training Protocol (BATP) to Address Balance Disorders in Older and Neurologically Disabled Veterans

Completed Last updated 22 January 2026

What this trial tests

trial testing Multi-Modality Balance Intervention in Older Men and Women With High Fall Risk in 62 participants. Completed in 13 August 2025.

Timeline

9 November 2021

Primary endpoint
13 August 2025

13 August 2025

Quick facts

Lead sponsor	VA Office of Research and Development
Status	Completed
Study type	OBSERVATIONAL
Enrollment	62
Start date	9 November 2021
Primary completion	13 August 2025
Estimated completion	13 August 2025
Sites	1 location across United States

Drugs / interventions tested

• Multi-Modality Balance Intervention
• Balanced Reach Training (BRT)

Conditions studied

• Older Men and Women With High Fall Risk — all drugs for Older Men and Women With High Fall Risk →

Sponsor

VA Office of Research and Development — full company profile →

Who can join

60 and older, any sex, with Older Men and Women With High Fall Risk. Patients with the condition only — healthy volunteers not accepted.

Sponsor's own description

Falls are by far the leading cause of accidental injury and death in older adults. The Veteran population is more severely affected by falls since it is significantly older than the overall population (45% over 65 years of age vs. 13%); and Veterans would benefit substantially more from an accurate diagnosis and treatment of fall propensity. Despite its importance, much is still unknown about the manner in which balance control is compromised by age and disease. Therapeutic interventions for people who are at risk of falling have proven to be of limited utility. Engineering methods are well suited to study and evaluate balance; but have to date been applied to overly simplified scenarios that lack the complexity to probe the musculoskeletal and neurophysiological bases for balance and falls.

The long term objective of this research, which began with a VA Rehabilitation Research \& Development (RR\&D) Career Development Award (CDA-2), is to develop improved directives and protocols for the diagnosis and treatment of balance-related posture and movement coordination problems. This proposal significantly advances engineering methods to address existing gaps in the diagnosis and treatment of balance impairments through the development of a Balanced Assessment and Training Protocol (BATP). The BATP continuously challenges subjects to perform reaching tasks at the limits of their balance for an extended period of time, and increases these limits as subjects demonstrate improved performance. The goal of this tool is to quantitatively assess and improve at-risk individuals' ability to maintain balance when disturbed by volitional movements of the body and its parts-an important class of balance disturbances integral to many activities of daily living that can precipitate falls. The BATP focuses on performance at and just beyond the limits of balance, unlike most such tests and training protocols that do not challenge subjects in this way. The BATP's most immediate and salient metric is the limiting boundary of standing reach; and we hypothesize that expanding this boundary, as the BATP is designed to do, will improve balance and make individuals more resistant to falls (in the context of expected balance disturbances).

Confirmation of this hypothesis could provide a new perspective on existing training protocols' modest success rates, and direction for the design of new protocols with the potential to significantly improve these rates. \[Though the BATP is a training platform, we also believe that the performance metrics and analytical results produced by it can form the basis for new diagnostic measures that more reliably and precisely quantify and explain balance performance problems; and track changes in them over time.\] Such diagnostic and treatment protocols would be particularly beneficial to the VA Health Care System, as it would lead to improvements in: patient throughput, quality of care, and treatment costs. Though this proposal targets the aging Veteran population, the BATP is a general tool that can aid in the diagnosis and treatment of balance disorders arising from conditions other than aging. These include obesity, diabetes (which often leads to lower extremity muscle degeneration and peripheral neuropathy), sarcopenia, vestibular disorders, and neurological disorders such as stroke. Veterans whose balance has been compromised by Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) (whether combat-related or not) may also benefit from the BATP.

Publications & conference data

No peer-reviewed publications indexed yet for this trial. Completed trials usually publish results within 12-18 months.