Posts Tagged ‘falls’
Vitamin D for nursing home patients can reduce falls.
A new systematic review from the Sydney Medical School at the University of Sydney in Ryde, Australia, has shown that giving people living in nursing facilities vitamin D can reduce the rate of falls. The Cochrane review, led by Dr. Ian Cameron examined 41 previous 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 that 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.”
Dr. Cameron points out the importance of a multi-disciplinary approach:”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. 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.”
Read the full article here.
In Halifax, there is the Geriatric Day Hospital and Falls Clinic. Click here for their information.
Do you know of any other falls prevention programs in Nova Scotia? Email us at info@cakens.com and we will include them in our links.
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Some medications related to falls in elderly people.
Science Daily reports on recent work by researchers at the University of British Columbia which has highlighted the relationship between certain types of medications and falls in elderly people. As falls or complications arising from these are one of the leading causes of death of elderly people in western nations, understanding how many commonly prescribed medications can crate a dangerous situation reinforces “the need for judicious use of medications in elderly people at risk of falling,” says Carlo Merra, an associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences at UBC. 
The Science Daily article reports: “Antidepressants showed the strongest statistical association with falling, possibly because older drugs in this class have significant sedative properties. Anti-psychotics/neuroleptics often used to treat schizophrenia and other psychoses and benzodiazepines such as valium were also significantly associated with falls.
Prescribing medications to seniors has increased substantially over the past decade, according to the study. For example, the BC Rx Atlas, recently published by UBC researchers, shows that more than one in seven people aged 80 or older filled at least one antidepressant prescription in 2006. In addition, determining which medication classes are associated with falls remains a challenge since seniors are often on multiple medications for multiple health conditions, with new drugs entering the market on a regular basis, says Marra.”
Read the complete article here.
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