Contributions of biomechanics to the elderly public

Abstract There are several scientific publications that refer to the public of the senior citizens nowadays. It can be due to the great interest of researchers in understanding the process of human aging. During this process several alterations happen in the organism, such as physiologic alterations, as the bad operation of some corporal structures and mechanics, for example, the incapacity of doing basic movements of the human body. Researchers must try to identify and investigate these alterations in order to clarify them, and so help interpret the natural process of human evolution. Biomechanics is one of the areas of the science that intends to understand the modifications occurring in the human being during this stage of life. Through biomechanics, it is possible to obtain important data to verify possible alterations in movement patterns, known in the literature as normal. This can be noticed through the analysis of the variables studied in this research. Those variables can be known with the help of measurement methods, which are essential factors for the development of biomechanical studies. Thus, it is noticed that the most recent studies accomplished in the elderly population refer to gait and balance, whose results are presented here.