USA: Caregiving - Chairs Need Arms, Say Experts

ALBANY, NY (UPI), May 25, 2006: Anyone with back pain, and most of the elderly, have an easier time getting out of a chair if the chair has arms - yet most doctor`s offices and hospitals have waiting room chairs with no arms. To experience what an elderly person or someone with back pain experiences, while sitting in a chair - with or without arms - push the chair back from the table and fold your arms across your chest. Get up and sit back down 10 times quickly in succession. It`s not just a fatigue and strength issue, but a balance one as well. You have to wonder why doctors and hospitals, who often see elderly and injured patients, don`t provide better seating. 'Responsible designers pay attention to user roles,' Paul Eshelman, a Cornell University professor who designs for special populations, told UPI`s Caregiving. 'However, most commercial interiors are updated and fixtures replaced fairly frequently, and the likelihood is they are not considering the needs of the aging population.' Although people come in a range of sizes and abilities, most furniture available in stores is often of the 'one-size-fits-all' variety. Although there are fads for overly large chairs and then fads for smaller chairs, rarely are chairs offered with different sizes in the same style-- even though people can be 4-foot-6 or 6-foot-4. Most kitchen chairs have no arms, yet that`s where many elderly spend a lot of time -- or at least have to get up and down frequently to cook and eat. 'Except for the `masters chair` in a dining room set, few residential chairs have arms, as do most visitor`s chairs in commercial settings,' Eshelman said. 'People are so different,' he said. 'As they age their needs change even more, but even in the U.S. office industry there was no ergonomic seating until 1974, which acknowledged that people don`t sit in a static position and moved while sitting.' It didn`t occur to me how important chair arms are to someone elderly until my 93-year-old father needed help getting up from a medical building`s waiting room because the chairs had no arms. I hadn`t noticed the problem at home because the chair in which he sits in the kitchen is an old World War II-era green Army office chair with arms, but no wheels. He got the chair more than 20 years ago from a neighbor, and over time it replaced the armless wooden kitchen chair. 'The (furniture) manufacturers are driven by the market - the companies will respond to what the market calls for,' Eshelman said. 'Most office chairs now incorporate some ergonomic features, and it`s worked well for them since the 1970s.' He cited recent innovations as well including net-like fabric that allows for better air flow. Considering the aging of America - and the rest of the world - there is been much less research than you`d expect into how to make sitting more comfortable. In Japan, the Fukuoka Institute of Interior Design found that 10 to 12 inches is the ideal difference in height between a table and a chair -- for all age brackets. 'The buttock-popliteal length and angles of trunk and thigh in the sitting position suggest that how the chair supports the thigh can influence muscle fatigue,' the Fukuoka study said. I can only guess what the buttock-political length is, but do we see new residential chairs with arms using the new fabrics being offered for the elderly and their baby boomer children? Not really, in fact not at all. 'There isn`t going to be design innovation for furniture to help `age at home` to enable people to live independently - until there is a perceived viable market,' said Eshelman. By Alex Cukan Alex Cukan is an award-winning journalist, but she always has considered caregiving her primary job, says UPI. E-mail: consumerhealth@upi.com Copyright 2006 United Press International