Balance Problems Aren’t All the Same — So Why Are Our Interventions?

Hosted by the Neurology SIG
Virtual
Eligible for Continuing Competency Points

Regardless of our specialty area, we all encounter people with balance deficits in our practice. While the medical diagnosis can give us many clues as to what is driving the instability, there are often complexities that impact how our patients move. While one intervention might work to help one patient balance better, the ideal intervention might look different for someone else even if they share a primary diagnosis. As movement experts, we can use movement analysis to help up derive hypotheses about the underlying impairments, identify diagnoses, and provide specific interventions in an efficient and patient-centered way. In 2021, the Movement System Committee, appointed by the Academy of Neurologic Physical Therapy (ANPT), published the Framework for Universal Movement Analysis and the Balance Diagnoses for Balance Dysfunction. Based on feedback, both frameworks underwent revisions and updates were published in 2026. These two frameworks will be utilized throughout this talk to discuss how to better understand postural control deficits and create specific intervention pans.
The 12 balance diagnoses proposed are based on the 3 postural control strategies – steady state, anticipatory, and reactive postural control- and their underlying determinants. In this talk, attendees will learn what the 12 balance diagnoses are, how to apply modifications to their movement analysis to investigate what is driving the individual’s unsteadiness, and how to utilize all of their observations and test and measure findings to arrive at a diagnosis. Most importantly, we will discuss how this process will then guide you to more specific balance interventions.
A patient case will be used throughout the presentation to discuss clinical application of this framework and help you feel prepared to apply this clinically.

Objectives
1. Participants will be able to classify balance impairments into the different diagnoses suggested by Gill-Body et al in “Movement System Diagnoses for Balance
Dysfunction: Recommendations From the Academy of Neurologic Physical Therapy’s Movement System Task Force”.
2. Participants will understand which key movement observations and test and measure findings are associated with different diagnoses.
3. Participants will be able to describe how to use task modifications to help guide clinical decision making when examining patients with balance impairments.
4. Participants will understand how to develop targeted interventions based on the specific balance diagnosis/es of the patient.

Presenter:

Ana Sanchez Junkin, PT, DPT, NCS is a Board Certified Neurologic Clinical Specialist. She obtained her Doctorate of Physical Therapy from the MGH Institute of Health Professions in 2016. She currently practices at Massachusetts General Hospital where her clinical practice focuses on vestibular and balance conditions. In addition to her clinical practice, Ana has 10 years of experience in clinical education. She is Adjunct Faculty at the MGH Institute of Health Professions and instructor at Boston University. She has served on the ANPT Knowledge Translation Task Force for the Movement System Balance Diagnoses since April 2023 and joined the ANPT Movement System Committee in 2025. She has presented on this topic locally, at ANPT annual conference and at CSM