Fear of falling in elderly persons living in a home for the aged

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Falling in elderly persons can lead to disability, hospitalizations, and premature death. It may also result in a psychological trauma termed fear of falling. Although it has been reported in developed countries that such fear may lead to staying home or other self-restriction of activities with debilitating physical consequenoes, it has not been studied yet in Korea. So we conducted this study to examine relative frequency of fear of falling and its association with measures of falling, activities of daily living, depression, frailty in elderly persons living in a home for the aged. METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional study of a sample of 152 subjects among 163 elders living in a home for the aged in Seoul Data on demographic and medical characteristics, and cognitive(MMSEK), functional(ADL, Instrumental ADL), and psychological(GDS-K) functioning, and measures of fall and frailty were obtained during assessments. We asked the subjects whether they had fear of falling in a dichotomous manner. RESULTS: The incidence of falls in the prior year was 29.6%, and the relative frequency of fear of falling was 57.2%. The variables associated with fear of falling with a statistical significance were as follows; old age(>or=80years), no education, no alcohol drinking, no smoking, use of assistive device, experience with falls and fall with injury in the prior 12 months, any disability in ADL, 3 or more disability in IADL In a stepwise logistic regression analysis, experience with falls(OR 2.80, 95% CI 1.12-6.97), 3 or more disability in IADL(OR 2.99, 95% CI 1.33-8.78), and no alcohol drinking(OR 3.23, 95% CI 1.36-7.95) were still associated independently with fear of falling. CONCLUSIONS: Fear of falling is common in the institutionalized elderly persons in Korea, and is associ- ated with decreased instrumental activities, recent experience with falls, and no alcohol drinking. There fore it represents the need for effective intervention to prevent and limit the consequences of falls and fear of falling in elderly persons.