Journal article
TIME AND ACTIVITY-NORMALIZED FALL RATES IN GLAUCOMA
Innovation in aging, v 1(Suppl 1), pp 1050-1050
30 Jun 2017
Abstract
Fall risk factors are typically shown as rate ratios, with rates calculated as the ratio of documented falls over months/years of follow-up. However, many factors which increase fall risk are also associated with activity restriction, and may lower one’s exposure to falls. Two-hundred forty-four patients with a range of visual field (VF) loss from glaucoma completed fall calendars to determine the association of VF loss severity (and other patient features) with fall rates over: (1) time, and (2) steps taken (inferred from annual 1 week accelerometry trials). The cumulative probability of falling was 0.45 among study participants. More severe VF loss was not associated with a higher rate of falls/year (RR=1.06 per 5 dB decrement in VF sensitivity, p=0.45), but was associated with a higher rate of falls/step (RR=1.18 per 5 dB decrement in VF sensitivity, p=0.03). Likewise, older age was associated with a higher rate of falls/step (p<0.001), but not with a higher rate of falls/year (p=0.28). Men did not differ from women with regards to their rate of falls/year (p=0.16), but were noted to have fewer falls/step (p=0.02). Finally, African-Americans were noted to have fewer falls/year (p=0.02) as compared to Whites, but did not differ with regards to their rate of falls/step (p=0.42). Our results suggest that evaluating fall rates simply as rates over time can incompletely characterize risk factors for falls. Future research should strongly consider employing activity measures in order to characterize risk factors for falls normalized to both time and activity.
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Details
- Title
- TIME AND ACTIVITY-NORMALIZED FALL RATES IN GLAUCOMA
- Creators
- P. Ramulu - Johns Hopkins UniversityA. Mihailovic - ,L.N. Gitlin - ,S. West - ,D. Friedman - ,
- Publication Details
- Innovation in aging, v 1(Suppl 1), pp 1050-1050
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- College of Nursing and Health Professions
- Other Identifier
- 991020112180704721