BACKGROUND It is recommended that older people report their falls to their general practitioner (GP), to identify falls risk factors. However, many older people do not report falling to their GP. Little is known about the reasons why older people do and do not seek help about falling. OBJECTIVE To explore why older women do or do not seek GP help after a fall. METHODS A qualitative study, u...

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY To determine whether reported falls at baseline are associated with an older adult's decision to make a residential adjustment (RA) and the type of adjustment made in the subsequent 2 years. DESIGN AND METHODS Observations (n = 25,036) were from the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative sample of community-living older adults, 65 years of age and older....

OBJECTIVES To examine the effect of obesity on the propensity of older adults to fall, sustain a fall-related injury, and develop disability in activities of daily living (ADLs) after a fall. DESIGN Longitudinal population-based survey. SETTING Five waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), 1998-2006. PARTICIPANTS Ten thousand seven hundred fifty-five respondents aged 65 and older i...

OBJECTIVE Falls are a well-known source of morbidity and mortality in the elderly. Fall-related injury severity in this group, however, is less clear, particularly as it relates to type of fall. Our purpose is to explore the relationship between mechanism of fall and both pattern and severity of injury in geriatric patients as compared with a younger cohort. METHODS Our trauma registry was qu...

For the purpose of the Community Guidelines, the definition of a fall is that adopted by the World Health Organisation [33]. A fall is an event which results in a person coming to rest inadvertently on the ground or floor or other lower level. This definition excludes falls resulting from an intentional change in position, but does include those where the person inadvertently comes to rest on f...

PURPOSE Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of irreversible visual impairment among older adults. This study explored the relationship between AMD, fall risk, and other injuries and identified visual risk factors for these adverse events. METHODS Participants included 76 community-dwelling individuals with a range of severity of AMD (mean age, 77.0 ± 6.9 years). Baseli...

The authors describe cerebrovascular and cerebral metabolic changes in monkeys, subjected to cerebral missile injury. After injury with BB pellet at 90 m/sec, there is a rapid rise in intracranial pressure (ICP), which reaches a peak 2 to 5 minutes posttrauma, and then falls to about 20 to 30 mm Hg. This, with a fall in mean blood pressure (MBP), results in a 50% reduction in cerebral perfusion...