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Vitamin D Reduces Falls
Reported January 21, 2010
(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Giving people living in nursing facilities
vitamin D can reduce the rate of falls. In hospitals, supervised exercise
programs also show benefit.
According to a new Cochrane Review, older people living in nursing
facilities or who have been admitted to hospital are much more likely to
suffer a fall than those living in the community. In these settings, falls
frequently result in head injuries and fractures, with rates of hip fracture
more than ten times higher in nursing facilities than in the community. It
is important to try to prevent falls to avoid unnecessary stress for older
people and their families, and to reduce pressure on staff and resources.
"Many of the preventive measures used to avoid falls in older people are
combined in what are called multifactorial interventions, so it can be very
difficult to separate out the effects of all the different measures," lead
researcher Ian Cameron, of Sydney Medical School at the University of Sydney
in Ryde, Australia, was quoted as saying.
The review included 41 trials involving 25,422 older people who were mostly
women. Five trials tested the effects of giving vitamin D to patients in
nursing facilities, where it was found to be an effective measure for
preventing falls.
The researchers found multifactorial interventions, which often incorporated
exercise, medication or environmental factors including appropriate
equipment, reduced the risk of falls in hospitals. In nursing homes, the
effects of multifactorial interventions were not significant overall.
However, the researchers concluded that multifactorial interventions
provided by multidisciplinary teams in these facilities may reduce the rate
and risk of falls.
"In our review, we saw limited evidence that these combined interventions
work, but we could more confidently recommend them if they were delivered by
a multidisciplinary team," Cameron said. "Currently, there's no one
component of any of these programmes that stands out as more important than
any other, and we're also missing data on whether increased supervision or
new technologies such as alarm systems are of any benefit."
SOURCE: Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, January 19, 2010 |
