Falls Among Community-Dwelling Elderly in Japan

Abstract

Japanese have a lower incidence of hip fracture than Caucasians despite having lower bone mass. Hip fractures usually occur after a fall, and differing incidence rates of falls might explain the observed differences in hip fracture rates. To explore this hypothesis, we studied falls and related conditions among 1534 (624 men, 910 women) community-dwelling people aged 65 years and over in Japan and compared the prevalence of falls to Japanese-Americans living in Hawaii and to published studies of Caucasians. In Japan, 9% of the men and 19% of the women reported one or more falls during the past year. The prevalence of falls increased with age in both genders and was greater among women compared with men. In logistic regression models, having musculoskeletal disease, physical disability or limited activity increased the risk of falls by two to four times in both genders. Most fallers (92%) reported fear of future falls, and about one third of fallers reported that they went out less often as a result of their falls. Compared with native Japanese, the age-standardized prevalence of falls among JapaneseAmericans was similar but about twice as high for Caucasians, which may explain the lower hip fracture risk of

Falls Are Associated with Stroke, Arthritis and Multiple Medications among Community-Dwelling Elderly Persons in Japan

“…Among our participants, 10% of those who fell sustained fractures, which is also consistent with previous findings (Aoyagi et al 1998;Niino et al 2000).…”

“…On the other hand, about 30% of community living adults aged ≥ 65 years fall each year (Hornbrook et al 1994;Burt and Fingerhut 1998;Tinetti 2003;Bergland and Wyller 2004). The elderly in Japan seem to fall less often than those in other countries, which is in part considered to explain the lower risk of hip fracture in Japan (Aoyagi et al 1998).…”

“…Although not fatal, about 37.3 million falls are severe enough to require medical attention annually (WHO 2012). Popula tion-based studies in Japan have shown that 10%-20% of elderly persons fall every year, and that about 10% of them sustain fractures as a result (Yasumura et al 1994;Niino et al 1995Niino et al , 2000Aoyagi et al 1998).…”

Falls in Hip Fracture Patients: Relation between Fall Situations and ADL Capability before Injury

“…According to recent research reports of the Japanese Orthopedic Association, 70-80% of hip fractures occur by a fall from the standing position, and two-thirds of the falls take place inside the house [2]. This is actually quite different from the falls of general community dwellers, which occur mainly outside the house [3][4][5]. There have been several studies about the falls which lead to hip fracture but their situations have not been well investigated, and furthermore, most of the studies were done in Western countries [1,[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18].…”

“…There have been several studies about the falls which lead to hip fracture but their situations have not been well investigated, and furthermore, most of the studies were done in Western countries [1,[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. Meanwhile, falls of generally healthy (or nearly healthy) old people have long been studied by many authors [3,5,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. Most of those papers stress the importance of fall prevention [31].…”