WORLD CONGRESS ON OSTEOPOROSIS, OSTEOARTHRITIS AND MUSCULOSKELETAL DISEASES 2019, Paris, Fransa, 4 - 07 Nisan 2019, ss.603
Objective: Prevention of in-hospital falls and injuries are possible if enough awareness is constituted. Falls are common problems in hospital and associated with serious morbidity and mortality. There are many scales used in clinical practice to determine the factors that increase the risk of falling in inpatients and to take measures if possible. ‘Itaki the fall Scale’ developed for this purpose in Turkey and is a scale commonly used in hospitalized patients for risk assessment of falling The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of fall-related factors in patients admitted to the Internal Medicine Clinic of the Istanbul Faculty of Medicine and the possible relationship with the clinics, and to determine whether the risk score in these patients predictive for falling by national scale of Itaki.
Method: We examined the results of Itaki scale risk scores, possible risk factors, total number of diseases, current medication and falling outcomes of >18 y patients hospitalized in Istanbul Medical Faculty Internal Medicine Clinics between 2012-2016.
Results: In a 5-y follow-up period, 5598 patients (women n=2665; men n=2933) and total 8337 hospitalizations were evaluated retrospectively. The mean age of all patients was 56.9±17.7 and the mean age of the fallen patients was 59.5±18. It was observed that 2.2% (n=121) of the inpatients had fallen. In fallen patients, 6.6% (n=8) had a recurrent fall. The mean risk of falling in all patients was 10±4.4; (9.8±4.3 in males and 10.1±4.5 in females). The risk of falling in women was higher (p<0.005). (P<0.001). The fall risk scores was significantly increased with age (p<0.001) The Itaki fall risk score in patients in the faller group was significantly higher (p<0.001) than the non-faller group (p<0.001). Most of the faller patients was observed in hematology clinic (n=32) Repeated falls was associated with bone marrow deficiency (P<0.005), such as MDS and aplastic anemia (p<0.005). (p<0.005, p<0.005, p<0.001, respectively).
Conclusion: In-hospital falls is a clinical problem requiring adequate awareness and related to significant morbidity and mortality. Fall risk identification of inpatients is important to take preventing measures, enhance the quality of patients life and preclude new comorbidities increasing mortality. According to our study, the Itaki Falling Risk Scale seems to be predictive for falling. According to our hospital’s 5-y data, the average falling rate is 2.2%, which seems to be in accordance with the literature (0.5% to 3.5%). In addition, since there is no previous study in the literature studied Falling Risk Scale. our study is important to increase the awareness of this scale outside our country. Due to longness of hospitalization, falling rates was observed most common in the hematology clinic among all internal medicine clinics. According to our study, female gender and older age was associated with more falls. High Itaki risk scores seems to be predictive for falls so that the more falls were seen in patients with higher risk score.