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Home Environmental Hazards and the Risk of Fall Injury Events Among Community‐Dwelling Older Persons
Author(s) -
Sattin Richard W.,
Rodriguez Juan G.,
DeVito Carolee A.,
Wingo Phyllis A.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
journal of the american geriatrics society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.992
H-Index - 232
eISSN - 1532-5415
pISSN - 0002-8614
DOI - 10.1111/j.1532-5415.1998.tb03799.x
Subject(s) - medicine , injury prevention , poison control , occupational safety and health , environmental health , suicide prevention , gerontology , human factors and ergonomics , confounding , population , fall prevention , proportional hazards model , demography , surgery , pathology , sociology
OBJECTIVE: To determine if home environmental hazards increase the risk of fall injury events among community‐dwelling older persons. DESIGN: Population‐based case‐control study. SETTING: South Miami Beach, Florida. PARTICIPANTS: 270 persons aged 65 years and older who sought treatment at six area hospitals for injuries resulting from falls within the dwelling unit and 691 controls, frequency matched for sex and age, selected randomly from Health Care Financing Administration (Medicare) files. MAIN INDEPENDENT VARIABLES: The home environment of each person, assessed directly by interviewers using a standardized instrument. RESULTS: Environmental hazards were present in nearly all dwelling units. After adjusting for important confounding factors, most of these hazards were not associated with an increased risk of fall injury events among most older persons. Increasing numbers of tripping hazards, or total hazards in the dwelling unit, did not increase the risk of fall injury events, nor was there an increasing trend in risk. CONCLUSIONS: Current fall‐prevention strategies of finding and changing all environmental hazards in all community‐dwelling older persons' homes may have less potential effect than previously thought. The usefulness of grab bars, however, appears to warrant further evaluation.