Falls incidence and its influencing factors among the rural community elderly aged 65 years and above in Chongqing City / 公共卫生与预防医学

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the current situation and risk factors of falls in the rural community elderly aged 65 years and above in Chongqing City, and to provide references for developing preventive measures. Methods The multistage cluster random sampling method was used to select several rural communities in Chongqing City from September to December, 2019, and then the elderly aged 65 years and above who lived in the communities for one year were chosen to serve as the surveyed subjects. A self designed questionnaire (sociodemographic factors, exercise status, illness and medication status and fall to related information) was used to collect the data regarding falls occurring in the last year. The chi-square test and multi factor multi-variant logistic regression analysis were utilized to analyze the data, the used software was SPSS 25.0. Results A total of 801 rural community elderly people in Chongqing City were surveyed．The average age was (71.64±5.85) years old. 7.12% of elderly need cane or walker. 6.87% of them self-reported their health was poor. 42.57% of elderly seldom have the habit of exercise. The prevalence of heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, arthritis, cataract, deafness self-reported was 8.99%、8.11%、17.48%、25.97%、13.73% and 6.24% respectively. Totally 104 elderly people experienced 128 falls in the past 12 months, and the incidence rates of falls and falling times were 12.84% and 15.98% respectively．The multi-variant logistic regression analysis showed that poor heath status self-reported（OR=4.04，95% , CI：1.71-9.52）, diabetes （OR=2.68，95% CI： 1.41-5.12）, osteoporosis （OR=1.91 , 95% CI：1.16-3.15）, arthritis （OR=2.60 , 95% CI：1.65-4.11） and non self-care（OR=2.44，95% CI：1.16-5.16） were the risk factors for falls in the rural community elderly. Conclusions The incidence rate of falls in the rural community elderly aged 65 years and above in Chongqing City was low．It is necessary to formulate comprehensive intervention measures for the risk factors of fall so as to reduce the incidence rate of falls in the elderly.