The 3D-PAT is appropriate for research and clinical settings to measure five upper quadrant postural angles in three dimensions.
It consists of 18 items covering four dimensions (behavioural, emotional, autonomic and postural).
The postural control depends on body composition and dimension.
If the visual information is absent, the influence of body composition on the balance postural vanishes, while the importance of the body dimensions increases.
This result is consistent with Rougier's finding [ 31] and is not surprising since CoP sway in ML aspect is mainly achieved by the control of hip abductor and adductors [ 42], indicating that MTHA impaired significantly the sensorimotor function and thus limits patient's capacity to effectively constrain postural sway in ML aspects according to the dimension of BOS.
To control the inverted pendulum during standing, afferent sensory information is used to tune the gain of postural responses [ 3] and to deal with the body dimensions constraints.
A mismatch in the dimensions of the chair impairs the ability of the postural muscles to support the body and could also lead to abnormal strain of the neuromuscular system, consequently causing pain [ 5, 13, 14].
Nevertheless, the assumption that postural sway should be normalized [ 14] by any body dimension must be carefully adopted.
The remaining dimensions of health-related fitness could be improved to achieve postural alignment, dynamic balance, functional mobility, and back extensor strength, which are associated with mobility limitations and an increased risk of falling in older adults.
On the other hand, the significant increment of postural sway during tandem stance comparing with other stance postures might indicate that the MTHA induced limited neuromuscular capacity around hip joint [ 9] to constrain postural sway when the demands of postural control increased due to change of BOS dimension.
