Epidemic characteristics of falls and its related injury among elderly female in Changing district of Shanghai / 中华老年医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To study the epidemic characteristics of falls among older female adults.Methods Stratified random sampling was applied in this study.Totally 969 elderly female adults aged 60 years and over from communities of Changning district were recruited and self-designed questionnaire was used in survey.Results Among 969 interviewees,238 (24.6％) had an injury in the past years,and 4.7％ had more than one fall.Among those who fell in the past year,84.5％ had suffered from different kinds of fall-related injury with injury incidence of 20.7 ％,and 32.4 ％ suffered from fracture with the fracture rate of 7.9％.There was a significant difference in fall incidence between different age groups,and the incidence increased with aging (x2 =30.26,P＜0.01).After a fall,71.6％ cases needed certain medical service,and 11.8％ were hospitalized for treatment.Among those suffered from fall-related injury,the activities of 29.3％ patients were decreased,and 3.0％ lost the ability to live independently.Most falls (31.2％) occurred at home.Among those,61.8％ of patients considered the reason of their falls was the interaction between intrinsic hazards and environmental hazards.Conclusions High incidence and severe consequence of fall appear among elderly female adults.More attention should be paid to this population.