[Fall risk and fracture. Fall risk assessment]

Abstract

For the prevention of fall and its associated injuries including various fractures among the elderly, some simple and clinical screening tools for prediction of falls for the community-dwelling elderly have been developed. In Japan, Toba et al. (2005) explored a portable Fall Risk Index (FRI) consisting of 22items for the elderly living in the community. Among these 22 items, selected seven items which were revealed as independent risk factors for previous falls, are also now considered as good predictor for future falls with the sensitivity and specificity of 0.65 and 0.72, respectively. Thus, FRI is considered as useful screening tools to identify high risk elderly people of falls in the community in Japan.