The Incidence Of Falling In Elderly Patients

The Incidence of Falling in Elderly Patients Student’s Name Institutional Affiliation The Incidence of Falling in Elderly Patients A Description of the Research Problem Falling is defined as inadvertently coming to rest on the floor, ground, or any other lower level place (Stenhagen et al., 2013). The rate of falling is high among the elderly and has resulted into unintentional injuries. Falling is mainly common among women than men, especially women who are in their menopause stage. However, there had been a problem in defining a fall. Several studies fail to specify operational definition of a fall which results into misinterpretation of the concept as people will define it differently. For instance, older people seem to define it as loss of balance while health professionals term it as event leading to ill health and injuries. Hence, there is need to provide an operational definition of the term to prevent different interpretations of the term. The frequency of falls globally among people who are around 65 years is approximately 28-35% (Chang et al., 2004). However, this number had been increasing by 2-4% annually. Contrarily, the falling rates among those who are over 70 years of age stand at 32-42% with annual increase of 5-7% (Chang et al., 2004).The statistics show that the number of falls increase with age and frailty level. Elderly persons who are living in nursing homes tend to fall more frequently than those who are living in community. Almost 30-50% of those living in long-term care institutions fall annually, and 40% percent of them experience recurrent falls (Phelan et al., 2016). Moreover, the rate of falling among the old age differs in various nations. For example, more people fall in Chile and Barbados than Japan and China.   Research Questions * Why are incidences of falling more prevalent among the elderly? * Can aerobic training be used to reduce falls among the elderly? * What other alternative actions can be taken to reduce falls among the elderly? Research Variables * Chronic health conditions * Walking balance * Impaired Vision * Confusion * Injuries * Decreasing abilities to function Conceptual Definitions of the Research Variables * Chronic health conditions: chronic health conditions are those diseases that are persistent in people. They could also be taken to mean those diseases that have long lasting effects on people and they come with time. The elderly people are susceptible to suffering from chronic health conditions that affect their abilities to function normally. Some of the chronic health conditions include: hypotension, dementia, and heart diseases. Hypotension is known to cause dizziness among people and making the susceptible to falling. * Walking balance: walking balance refers to the steadiness of walking. Many elderly people are known to have a balance disorder that causes them to walk unsteadily. As a result, they are more susceptible to experience falls due to their inability to maintain a steady balance. Several conditions are known to cause walking balance disorder such as Parkinson’s disease, labyrinthitis, spinal stenosis etcetera. Those with the conditions above always feel to be moving, floating, or spinning. For one to have a normal balance, the body ...