Rate of falls on the rise

By Yasmin Noone

The number of older Australians hospitalised after a fall has risen by more than 4,000 in only one year, according to a newly released Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) report.

The new research, based on hospitalisation figures from 2008-2009, showed that older people who lived in aged care facilities fell more than six times the rate of people the same age, who live in the community and fell in their home.

Injuries due to falls were the cause of one in every 10 days spent in hospital by a person aged 65 years and older in 2008–09, with the total length of stay per fall injury averaging 16 days.

The report, Hospitalisations due to falls in older people, Australia 2008-09, also stated there were 78,600 hospitalised injury cases due to falls in people aged 65 and over, with women making up most of the hospitalisations for falls.

AIHW spokesperson, Professor James Harrison, said the rate of fall cases was higher for women than for men across all older age groups.

“‘The rate of hospitalised falls for older women is now more than 3,000 per 100,000 older women, continuing the steady increase observed since 1999–00,” Prof Harrison said.

About one-third of fall injury cases involved injuries to the hip and thigh, and the majority of these were hip fractures.

“Despite a decrease in the rate of hospitalised hip fractures among older people over the 10 years to June 2009, the number of hospitalisations due to falls in older people is rising.”

Head injuries accounted for about one in five cases and were more common for men than women. Falls on the same level due to slipping, tripping, or stumbling (rather than, for instance, a fall involving furniture or stairs) were the most common cause of a hospitalised fall injury.

About 70 per cent, of hospitalised falls occurred in either the home or an aged care facility. Older people who lived in aged care facilities had a rate of falls nearly six times as high as that for people of the same age who lived in the community and fell in their home.

In Australia, about four per cent of all hospitalisations for people aged 65 and older are the result of injuries, and falls account for 77 per cent of these.

Broken bones, broken heart?

Researchers are now suggesting there may be a link between mental illness and falling in older people, following the release of a new study which shows that people who suffer from depression are more likely to fall.

The study, published in the journal Age and Ageing, found that along with visual impairments and poor balance, an equally important factor associated with a person’s chance of falling is whether they suffer from depression.

Falls researcher and expert, Professor Stephen Lord from Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA) and his colleagues studied a population of people 65 years of age and older in Taiwan.

They found that depression was more common in people that fell compared to people that did not fall: 40 per cent of recurrent fallers, 28 per cent of people that fell once and only 16 per cent of people that did not fall were depressed.

“We’ve known that depression and falls are connected in older people for some time, but we were never able to determine whether depression itself or anti-depressants increase the rate of falling,” said Prof Lord.

“But anti-depressants are not commonly taken by the people we studied and so for the first time we were able to measure lifestyle factors, rates of depression, and how often people fell without the effect of any depression-related medications.”

This study means that in addition to enhancing vision, strength and balance, health programs around the world designed to prevent falling in older people also need to consider mental health.

“Now we know that depression and falls are interrelated, fall prevention strategies targeting older people need to also assess and treat depression to have the maximum impact.”