The Effect of Exercise Interventions on Movement Capabilities in People with Hearing ‎Impairment: a Systematic Review

Movement capabilities are potentially important in the daily lives of people with hearing impairments. Therefore, the purpose of this review was to investigate the effect of exercise interventions on movement capabilities in people with hearing impairment.

In this study, a systematic review of the effect of exercise interventions on movement capabilities of people with hearing impairment by searching Google Scholar, PubMed, Science Direct, Web of Science, Scopus, PEDro, and, EMBASE databases with the keywords Exercises, Exercises interventions, Physical activity, Physical readiness, Physical fitness, hearing impairment, Hearing loss, Deaf, Balance, Strength, Endurance. It was also conducted in the Persian databases of Google Scholar, Megapaper, Irandac, Magiran, Sid, MedLib, IranMedex, and Iran Science and Technology Research Institute with the relevant keywords from 2000 to 2022.

In the search of texts, a total of 132 articles were received, and after deleting similar cases, among the articles that were very closely related to the subject under study, 22 articles were selected for the present study. 14 Persian studies and 8 English studies were found. exercise interventions had a significant effect on balance, muscular and cardiovascular endurance, movement skills, coordination, walking speed, and reaction time of people with hearing impairment.

The results of the present review study showed that performing exercise interventions in most studies improves movement capabilities in people with hearing impairment. Most of the exercise protocols used in the studies were of balance and stability type. to improve the balance control disorder of these people. Therefore, on this basis, coaches, sports teachers, physiotherapists, and therapists are recommended to use such exercise programs to improve the movement capabilities of people with hearing impairment. But more and more detailed studies are still needed in this field.