Falls in Geriatric Cases

INTRODUCTION: The aim of this study is to examine the causes of falls and the clinical consequences of falling in elderly pa-tients in fallrelated emergency department admission.
METHODS: This study was conducted retrospectively on patients aged 65 and over, presenting with a fall to Health Sciences University Haydarpaþa Numune Training and Research Hospital Emergency Medicine Clinic between 01.01.2019 and 01.08.2019. Data such as demographic characteristics of the patients, systemic diseases, drug use, reason for falling, place of fall, diagnosis in the hospital were determined and these data were analyzed comparatively with each other.
RESULTS: Of the 443 patients aged 65 and over who applied to the emergency department due to falls, 246 patients who met the criteria were included in the study. One hundred forty-four (58.5%) of these patients were female. The mean age was 71.4+4.7 years. Of the patients, 104 (42.3%) fell indoors, 129 (52.4%) fell outside, and 13 (5.4%) fell on the stairs. One hundred and eighty-eight patients (77.7%) fell due to dizziness and loss of balance. Falls were more common in people with systemic disease (p=0.043). The most common diagnoses were soft tissue trauma (STT) (20.1%), fracture (14.7%) and head trauma (4.9%), respectively. There was a statistically significant correlation between the number of falls and age (p<0.001).
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: It has been reported that the annual fall rate per capita in healthy people aged 65 and over is around 30-40%; this rate increases with age, and the biggest risk factor for falls is a previous fall history. Similarly, in this study, the annual fall rate was calculated as 31.7% and the rate of multiple falls as 11.4%. Evans et al. reported head trauma as the most common diagnosis of falling in this age group (26.8%). However, in our study, the diagnosis of soft tissue trauma was in the first place with a rate of 20.5%. The second most common diagnosis was fracture (14.7%). The reason for this difference may be that we consider soft tissue traumas as a separate category.