The purpose of the study was to determine the effects of balance training with 'TETRAX' system, a balance training and assessment tool, on balance and mobility in acute hemiplegic patients. Nineteen matched subjects were assigned randomly into either an experimental group or a control group. An experimental group with 10 subjects received balance training with 'TETRAX' exercise program and conventional physical therapy interventions 5 times per week during 4 weeks. A control group with 9 subjects received conventional physical therapy interventions 5 times per week during 4 weeks. Outcome measures were taken before and after 4 weeks of interventions using the Stroke Rehabilitation Assessment of Movement (STREAM), the Berg Balance Scale (BBS), gait speed, and the fall down index. Results indicated that both exercise groups improved significantly in STREAM, BBS, and gait speed (p<.05). The experimental group had a little improvement than the control group. Both exercise groups did not show statistical significance in fall down index (p<.05). Following 4 weeks of intervention, except gait speed there was no statistically significant difference between two groups. However, these findings suggest that conventional physical therapy interventions with visual feedback training could be effective on improving balance and mobility than conventional physical therapy alone in acute hemiplegic patients.

The Pediatric Balance Scale (PBS) is a modified Berg's Balance Scale developed as a balance measure for school-aged children with mild to moderate motor impairments. The purpose of this study was to determine the inter-examiner reliability of the Korean version of PBS when applied to children with developmental delays. In this study, PBS was administrated to a total of 79 children with developmental delays (17 with global developmental delay, 31 with cerebral palsy, and 31 with mental retardation) in the Seoul Community Rehabilitation Center. Two pediatric trained physical therapists with longer than 13 year of clinical experience scored the children's performance blind, while replaying videotaped data. The inter-examiner reliability was statistically determined by intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs). The results of this study revealed that the Korean version of PBS seems to have high inter-examiner reliability when applied to children with movement disorders such as global developmental delay (ICC=.96) and cerebral palsy (ICC=.97); however, it has relatively lower inter-examiner reliability (ICC=.78) for children with developmental delay secondary to mental retardation. therefore, the results support that the Korean version of the PBS could be a useful clinical measurement to assess the balance skills for children with developmental delay who have an adequate level of cognition to enable them to fol1ow the verbal instructions to complete the test.