Abstract

MARTIN, Ignacio; RIBEIRO, Óscar; ALMEIDA, Rosa  and  SANTOS, Ângela. Fall and fear of falling among persons aged 75 years and older. Gerokomos [online]. 2013, vol.24, n.4, pp.158-163. ISSN 1134-928X.  https://dx.doi.org/10.4321/S1134-928X2013000400003.

Falls in the elderly are recognized as a major public health problem and the fear of falling has been focused in the recent literature. This article analyzes the relationship between falling historic and fear of falling in very old people, and its relationship with socio-demographic variables and geriatric risk indicators by application of a triage instrument to a non-random sample of 240 community residents with more than 75 years. We observed high prevalence of accidents involving falls (40.4%) and fear of falling (63.3%). Age, gender, functional and cognitive engagement, depression and lack of social and family support were some of the statistically significant associations with fear of falling. These results reassert the importance of developing screening tools to facilitate the rapid detection of risk groups, mainly the elders whose fear of falling is unjustified given the real physiological risk of falling and/or a previous accident of fall.

Keywords : Self-report; falls; fear of falling; screening; older people; geriatric risk.

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