Elderly patients and falls: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Objective: The predetermination of the risk for falls in elderly patients, who will have or had a surgery, enables one to carry out the protective/preventive interventions on this matter. The aim of this review was to provide an up-to-date meta-analysis with regard to falls in elderly surgical patients.

Materials and methods: The studies, which were carried out on elderly patients between January 2009 and November 2019 and which investigated the risk factors for falls in elderly surgical patients, were screened on the databases of Google Scholar, Pubmed, Ovid, Cinahl through various combinations of keywords, such as "geriatrics", "aged", "surgery", "accidental falls" in English or Turkish, to determine the risk factors for the falls in elderly surgical patients.

Results: Meeting the study inclusion criteria, 18 studies were analyzed. Of these studies, three were retrospective, seven descriptive, two case-control, four cross-sectional, and two prospective. The kappa value of the general rate of agreement was found as 0.84. No publication bias found in the studies included (Kendall's tau b = 0.31; p = 0.07) in the meta-analysis based on the values calculated.

Conclusion: In this meta-analysis, it was determined that the falls in elderly surgical patients were quite a prevalent public health problem, that the presence of chronic diseases and previous history of falls constituted an extremely high risk for the falls in elderly patients, and that the age or the presence of a gait-inhibiting condition did not constitute any risk for the falls in elderly patients.

Keywords: Accidental fall; Elderly; Meta-analysis; Risk factors; Surgery.