Citation

Di Monaco M, Vallero F, Tappero R, De Lauso L, De Toma E, Cavanna A. Arch. Gerontol. Geriatr. 2009; 48(3): 397-400.

Affiliation

Osteoporosis Research Center, Presidio Sanitario San Camillo, Strada Santa Margherita 136, IT-10131, Torino, Italy.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.archger.2008.03.008

PMID

18453015

Abstract

The present study focused on home-dwelling women successfully discharged back to the community after a fall-related fracture of the hip. We investigated the role of incident falls in affecting ability to function in activities of daily living. Ninety-five of 103 consecutive women without cognitive impairment were recruited during in-patient rehabilitation following their first hip fracture. Functional independence in activities of daily living was assessed by using the Barthel Index (BI) score at discharge from in-patient rehabilitation and at a 6-month follow-up. Nineteen of the 95 women sustained one or more falls during a median observation time of 187 days. At a Mann-Whitney test, both BI scores assessed at the 6-month follow-up and gains in BI scores during the follow-up were significantly lower in the 19 fallers than in the 76 non-fallers (p=0.021 and p=0.030, respectively), whereas no significant differences were found in baseline BI scores between the two groups. At linear multiple regression, we found a negative association between incident falls and both functional scores (p= 0.01) andtheir gains (p= 0.006) after adjustment for several confounders. We conclude that incident falls were significantly associated with a worse functional score in our sample of hip-fracture women.

Language: en