(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
