Background: To accomplish day-to-day functional activities, it is fundamentally important to maintain static balance, thereby enabling appropriate postures, movements and responses. Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate oscillations in static balance among amputees with lower limb prostheses, by means of an adapted Romberg test, and to compare such oscillations with those among individuals without amputations. Method: Thirty-three male individuals of mean age 33.38 years were evaluated, in three different groups. Group A was composed of 12 amputees who were utilizing a transfemoral prosthesis. Group B was formed by 9 individuals with a transtibial amputation. Group C (control) contained 12 normal individuals. All subjects were filmed in the frontal and sagittal planes, and their movements were evaluated frame by frame to select the moments of greatest oscillation. The images selected were quantified by means of computerized biophotogrammetry using the program ALCimage 2.1®. Results: The results showed significant differences among the anterior oscillations for the group A and among the left-side oscillations for group B. Conclusion: From these results, it was concluded that lower-limb amputees present a tendency towards more significant oscillations in the anterior direction and contralaterally to the prosthesis. With advancing age, a lesser tendency towards posterior oscillation was noted.
amputation; static balance; computerized biophotogrammetry
