USO DE SMARTPHONES EM DUPLA-TAREFA AUMENTA RISCOS DE QUEDAS E DE ACIDENTES EM IDOSOS: RESULTADOS DE UMA REVISÃO SISTEMÁTICA

Abstract

The use of smartphones is integrated more and more into people's lives. The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic review of the literature on the effects of using smartphones simultaneously with another activity on the health of elderly people. For that, the descriptors “smartphone”, “elderly”, “dual tasks”, “imbalance”, and “risks of falls” were used and confronted by the boolean operators “and” and “or”, in SciELO and Medline/PubMed databases. Two independent researchers searched for articles addressing the impact of the use of smartphones on the health of older adults during a secondary task. Studies were compared in terms of clinical profile of the participants, sample size, evaluation mechanisms, inferential analyses, and outcome. Primary analysis with the descriptor “smartphone” identified 254 articles published in journals associate to SciELO and 16,164 articles published in journals linked to Medline/PubMed. The inclusion of the others descriptors reduced the number of articles to 13, all linked to Medline/PubMed. The articles included agreed on the dangers related to changes in gait (decreased speed, step size, stride length) and risks of falls caused by performing activities simultaneously with the use of smartphones in the health of elderly people. In conclusion, this review identified that the number of studies addressing the impact of dual tasks with smartphones in older adults is still low.