| |
Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
 | |
|
Multifactorial assessment and targeted intervention for preventing falls and injuries among older people in community and emergency care settings
— systematic review and meta-analysis | | Author(s) | S Gates, J D Fisher, M W Cooke |
| Journal title | British Medical Journal, vol 336 no 7636, 19 January 2008 |
| Pages | pp 130-133 |
| Source | http://www.bmj.com |
| Keywords | Falls ; Injuries ; Preventative medicine ; General practice ; Casualty services ; Literature reviews. |
| Annotation | Systematic reviews suggest that the most effective way to reduce falls is multifactorial risk assessment and individual interventions against risk factors. The present review traced studies using Medline, Embase, CENTRAL, CINAHL, PsychINFO, Social Sciences Citation Index, reference lists of included studies and previous reviews. Eligible studies were randomised or quasi-randomised trials that evaluated interventions to prevent falls that were based in emergency departments, primary care or the community, that assessed multiple risk factors for falling, and provided or arranged for treatments to address these risk factors. 19 studies, of variable methodological quality, were included. The combined risk ratio for the number of fallers during follow-up among 18 trials was 0.91 and for fall related injuries (8 trials) was 0.90. No differences were found in admission to hospital, emergency department attendance, death, or move to institutional care. Sub-group analyses found no evidence of different effects between interventions in different locations, populations selected for high risk of falls or unselected, and multidisciplinary teams including a doctor, but interventions that actively provide treatments may be more effective than those that provide only knowledge and referral. Evidence that multifactorial fall prevention programmes in primary care or emergency care settings are effective in reducing the number of fallers or fall-related injuries is limited. Data were insufficient to assess fall and injury rates. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-080122204 A |
| Classmark | OLF: CU: LK2: L5: LK8: 64A * |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
|
| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
| |
|