Quantitative and clinical description of postural instability in women with breast cancer treated with taxane chemotherapy

Objective: To describe the postural control of women who received taxane chemotherapy for treatment of breast cancer using quantitative and clinically feasible measures. Design: Prospective descriptive study. Setting: University-based comprehensive cancer center. Participants: Twenty women who completed taxane treatment for breast cancer and 20 healthy controls participated in this study. Interventions: Not applicable. Main Outcome Measures: Two quantitative measures of postural control were used, Sensory Organization Test (SOT) and center of pressure (COP) velocities. Two clinically feasible measures of postural control were used, the Fullerton Advanced Balance Scale (FABS) and Timed Up & Go (TUG) test. Results: Compared with healthy controls, women with breast cancer had poorer postural control on all of the outcome measures. FABS and TUG scores correlated moderately with SOT and COP scores. Conclusions: After taxane chemotherapy, women with breast cancer show significantly increased postural instability compared with matched controls. Clinically feasible measures of postural control correlated with quantitative tests. These results suggest that these clinical measures may be useful to screen patients to determine who may benefit from rehabilitation.