The Value of Sports and Functional Exercise on Preventing Falls in Elderly Patients with Cognitive Impairment: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

ABSTRACT

Objective: To explore the value of sports and functional exercises in preventing falls in elderly patients with cognitive impairment. Methods: PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, VIP, Wanfang Database, and China Biomedical Literature Database (CBM), from inception to January 2023, were used to search the randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of sports and functional exercises in elderly patients with cognitive impairment. Two independent researchers extracted the data and evaluated the quality of the included literature. RevMan5.4 software was adopted for data analysis. Results: The results indicated that exercise combined with functional exercise could noticeably enhance the fall effect score and shorten the Timed Up and Go Test (TUGT) time of elderly patients with cognitive impairment compared to simple drug treatment (P < .05). Our results showed that the exercise combined with functional exercise can noticeably prolong the standing time of elderly patients with cognitive impairment upon monocular eye closure. Our results also showed that exercise combined with functional exercise can noticeably improve the fear of falls in elderly patients with cognitive impairment. Conclusion: Sports and functional exercise intervention can promote the balance ability and fall self-efficacy of elderly patients with cognitive impairment and have a positive effect on enhancing patients' fear of falls. The findings need to be further verified and methodological quality needs to be improved. In addition, longer intervention times are required to verify the findings.