A Prospective Study of Relationships between Fall-Related Accidents in the Elderly Living in the Community and their Physical, Psychological, and Cognitive Functions

Abstract

[Purpose] We carried out a prospective study of falls in community-living elderly for a year and examined the factors in their fall.[Subjects] The subjects were 133 elderly people (average age 73.9  5.6 years) who didn't have severe cognitive symptoms and were receiving certified long-term care needs. Thirty-five subjects had a fall during the year (falls group) and 98 subjects did not (no-fall group).[Methods] We evaluated subjects' physical, cognitive and psychological functions for the baseline survey, and compared the results of falls group and no-fall group.[Results] In comparison of the baseline characteristics, foot-gripping strength, one-leg standing time, the TMIG index of competence scores, attention function and subjective view of health of the falls group were significantly lower than those of the no-fall group. However, in logistic regression analysis with the dependent variable as "fall experience in a year", the odds ratios of all items showed no significant difference.

Fear of falling and falls self‐efficacy and their relationship to higher‐level competence among community‐dwelling senior men and women in Japan

“…17 The Index has been used extensively among Japanese senior citizens, albeit in studies dealing with physiological and pathological issues associated with aging. 27,28 Based on results of previous studies examining the association between indices of higher-level competence and related factors, sociodemographic characteristics, 29 disease and biomedical histories, 29 psychological characteristics, [30][31][32] functional status measures, [33][34][35] and experience of falling during last year 36,37 were considered as potential confounding variables. Except for age which was an open-ended question, and depression which was determined using a scale, the rest of the covariates were measured in dichotomous (yes/no) or in categorical terms ("good", "fair" or "poor/bad").…”

An Integrative Psychophysiological Study of Cognitive Function in Active Elderly Rationale, Methods and Initial Results

“…Furthermore, general functions and sensuous coordination will fall caused by the drop of mental or cognitive function, such as thought, judgment, memory, incentive, emotion and so on. As a result, with walking motion (walking speed, walking ratio; decrease in step size, expansion of walking interval) disturbed, it's may cause a fall by the drop of the walking attention [8] [9]. So, if we want to make clear the relationship between physical state and mental state of elderly persons, we must to analyze the data by using physiological and psychological indexes.…”

Examinations of factors influencing toe grip strength

“…The muscles involved in toe grip include the flexor pollicis brevis, flexor pollicis longus, the lumbricals, flexor brevis, and flexor longus1 ) . Toe grip strength can be increased by training2, 3 ) , which can decrease the risk of falls1, 4, 5 ) . Therefore, interventions targeting toe grip strength are effective; however, the mechanisms behind toe grip strength have not been sufficiently investigated.…”