Regular Research ArticlesMild Cognitive Impairment as a Predictor of Falls in Community-Dwelling Older People
Section snippets
Participants
Four hundred nineteen people age 70–90 years participated in a prospective cohort study with a 1-year follow-up for falls. Participants were randomly recruited from a cohort of 1,037 community-dwelling men and women living in Eastern Sydney and participating in Wave 1 of the Sydney Memory and Ageing Study (MAS, January 2006 to October 2007).17 There were no differences between the total cohort sample (n = 1,037) and our subsample (n = 419) on any of the medical or neuropsychological measures
MEASURES
At baseline, the participants underwent an extensive assessment on medical, physiologic, and neuropsychological measures by trained research staff.
RESULTS
The mean (SD) age of the participants was 77.8 (4.6) years; 226 (53.9%) participants were women. Detailed characteristics of the sample are shown in Table 2. On self-rated health status using a five-point scale, 362 (86.4%) participants rated their health as good, very good, or excellent. One hundred forty-one (33.7%) participants reported injurious or multiple falls. One hundred eighty-three (43.7%) reported one or more falls, of whom 105 (25.1%) reported only one fall and 78 (18.6%) reported
DISCUSSION
This study suggests that the incidence of injurious or multiple falls in people with MCI is nearly twice that of people with normal cognitive functioning. To our knowledge, this is the first longitudinal study to investigate the relationship between falls and a clearly defined classification of MCI in a representative sample of community-dwelling older people. The incidence of both MCI and falls was comparable to previous studies, supporting the representativeness of our sample and indicates
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Cited by (0)
The manuscript was drafted by Dr. Delbaere and Dr. Lord. Dr. Lord, Dr. Delbaere, and Dr. Close conceived the study objectives and design. Dr. Delbaere had full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. All authors were involved with interpretation of the data and preparation of manuscript.
This research was conducted as part of a study on Understanding Fear of Falling and Risk-taking in Older People, which has been funded by an Australian NHMRC grant 400941. Dr. Lord is currently a NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow. The participants in this study were drawn from the Memory and Ageing Study of the Brain and Ageing Program, School of Psychiatry, UNSW, funded by a NHMRC Program grant 350833 to Drs. Sachdev, Brodaty, and Andrews.
The FallScreen (PPA) assessment is commercially available through Neuroscience Research Australia.