Falls in older adults

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• 作者：Rose A. Kenny ; Roman Romero-Ortuno ; Prakash Kumar
• 关键词：Accidental falls ; diagnosis ; disease management ; evidence-based medicine ; explained fall ; geriatric assessment ; practice guidelines as topic ; prevention ; quality of life ; syncope ; unexplained fall
• 刊名：Medicine
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：January 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：45
• 期：1
• 页码：28-33
• 全文大小：769 K
• 卷排序：45

文摘

Falls are very common in older people, and for some the consequences are devastating. The clinical assessment, management and investigation of patients who present with falls can be challenging for non-specialists, and multiple guidelines and algorithms have been published to aid this. This article has been prepared as a concise reference that reviews the most recent evidence and covers the medical competencies on falls outlined in the Curriculum for General Internal Medicine (Acute) of the Federation of Royal Colleges of Physicians of the UK. As in the curriculum, the emphasis is on the acute setting. Important topics covered include the epidemiology of falls, definition and classification, causes and risk factors, cumulative effect of risk factors and concept of individual falling threshold, physical and psychosocial consequences of falling, medical falls assessment in acute settings, differentiation between falls and syncope, principles of multifactorial falls assessment and intervention, teamwork and communication skills, and evidence-based strategies for prevention, including the latest developments in falls prevention research.