The Incidence of Fall and Past History of Falling in Aged Hospitalized Patients

Abstract

Background: Identifying elderly people with the risk of fall in hospitals
is particularly important for prevention of falls. Review of literature
suggested that the association between falls and some characteristics
of geriatric inpatients. The aim of this study was to determine the
predisposing factors of falling among the elderly hospitalized patients.
Methods: In this descriptive-analytic cross-sectional study, 1213
elderly hospitalized patients, 60 years old and above recruited to
participate in the study. Of all participant 385 subjects met the
inclusion criteria of the study. Data collected from a secondary study
on falls which was conducted from March to December 2016. A
demographic questionnaire and Johns Hopkins fall risk assessment
tool were used to evaluate the falls incident and risk of fall among the
elderly people. The scores were analyzed by SPSS software version 16.
Chi square test and exact test of Fisher and logistic regression were
employed for data analysis. Significance level was set at 0.05.
Results: The mean of age in the subjects was 71.68 + 8.32 years old.
Off all 385 eligible aged hospitalized patients, the rate of falls
estimated to be 1.05 per 1000 bed-day. Approximately 12% of cases
experienced at least one fall during hospitalization period. According
to the results of logistic regression analysis, the most predisposing
factors for falls in hospital was the past history of falling with odds
ratio of 12.7. Moreover, older age (age ≥ 80 years old), use of
medication/equipment, low cognitive ability, and polypharmacy with
odds ratios of 2.63, 1.49, 2.26, 0.988, and 3.34 were related to the
falling in the past, respectively.
Conclusions: The results of the study indicated that the incident of falls
among geriatric patients were relatively low, due to clinical
interventions in hospital to prevent falls or to routine underestimation
and under report of falls.