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Background and Aim: Balance is an essential part of motor development. Assessment of balance in children with neurological disorders is necessary before any treatment. There are various versions of balance tests for adult assessment however, little has been done with regard to a reliable test for evaluating the balance in children with spastic cerebral palsy.      

The purpose of this study was to investigate inter and intra rater reliability of Berg balance scale in children with spastic hemieplegia.

Material & Methods: 20 Spastic hemieplegia children were participated in this study (cross sectional).  Children were in the range of 6-12 Yrs (Mean & SD, 7/10 &1/58 yrs, correspondingly). Parents were asked to sign the informed consent. Berg Balance Scale tested in one session by two therapist for inter rater and repeated tests by the same therapist for intra rater reliability after a week.

Results: Intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) test was used for inter rater (between two therapists, ICC= 0.966, p<001 and intra rater reliability (repeated test by the same therapist, ICC= 0.988 , p<001 ).

Conclusion: The result of this study suggests that inter rater and intra rater reliability of Berg balance scale is acceptable. Therefore, it could be used in clinic for the assessment of children with spastic hemieplegia as a reliable scale.

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Background and aim: The elderly people are one of the most vulnerable people in any society. Falling in this group is accompanied with decrease of daily living activities. With regard of improvement of balance in perevention of falling, the aim of this study is survey about the effect of Cawthorne and Cooksey exercises on improvement of balance.
Material and Methods:36 elder men with age above 60 years old put in two groups (control group= 19 and exercise group= 17) who lived in the elderly center in city of Mashhad. The subjects in exercise group participated in the Cawthorne and Cooksey exercises during three months, three times a week, during sixty minutes. Balance status of subjects evaluated with Berg Balance Scale(BBS) in 4 stages ( befor exercise and one month, two months and three months) after exercises.
Result: Results showed that improvement of the balance in the different evaluation stages of BBS was significantly increased particularly in the first and second months (p< 0.05). The effects of exercise group were significantly different from control group(p=0.000).
Conclusion: Cawthorne and Cooksey exercises were effective on the balance improvement of elderly men in center of Mashhad and two months of these exercises were enough to improve balance in this group.

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Background and Aim: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a demylinating disease that due to the involvement of multiple areas in central nervous system, including sensorimotor system can impair the patients' balance. The aim of the present study was to determine the balance, extremities muscular strength and disability rate in Iranian patients with MS and to investigate the relationship between these parameters. 

Materials and Methods: Sixty eight patients with MS participated voluntarily in this study. The berg balance scale (BBS), Motricity index (MI) and self report patient determined disease steps (PDDS) were used for assessing the balance, extremities muscular strength and patients' disability rate, respectively 

Results: Fifty six of patients showed balance impairment. Balance values were significantly correlated with muscular strength of upper (p=0.011) and lower (p<0.001) extremities in patients with balance impairment. But, the relation between balance and muscular strength in patients without balance impairment was not significant (p>0.05).There was a negative correlation between balance and disability rate (p<0.001).

Conclusion: The results of this study showed that more than 50% of patients have balance impairment. Furthermore, the importance of evaluating muscle strength in order to predict the falling risk in MS patients were identified.