The Incidence of Fall in Aged Hospitalized Patients

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.