Backward falling elderly

van de Rakt, Jan and Mccarthy-Grunwald, Steven ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4873-5068 (2022) Backward falling elderly. General Medicine and Clinical Practice, 5 (3).

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Abstract

Introduction: The investigation with video recordings through Prof. Robinovitch and colleague gave as outcome that backward falling was the most common fall accident in long car facilities. Walking with an walking aid as an rollator frame gave no solution, elderly in long car facilities felt with this device also when the walk backward and often within three or four steps was the fall in progress. Almost always was this an situation that was unstoppable and needed often the first assistance and/or supervision but forward walking was still good possible. This great difference make us curious why walking backward was so risk full for falling.

Methods: An assessment was done by all people that has problems with backward walking but still walk good forward. This population was very diverse. There were people out the long car facilities, nursing home residents but also elderly that live in their own house and about eighty precent has an diagnosis dementia. The assessment contains investigation of the perception, the motoric reaction, balance reactions, tone and the selectivity. Further one we search in the literature for investigation on this subject but also look at video captures how this fall take place and make an analyse.

Conclusion: The two elements that has the most impact were: The stiffness of the trunk hip through pathological tone and/or hypertonus to maintain the attitude. The perception under the feet with an direct relation with weight bearing but also the reaction of the balance system that was often not on right moment.

Item Type:	Article
Journal / Publication Title:	General Medicine and Clinical Practice
Publisher:	Auctores Publishing
ISSN:	2639-4162
Departments:	Institute of Health > Nursing
Additional Information:	This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Depositing User:	Anna Lupton
Date Deposited:	15 Aug 2022 09:09
Last Modified:	13 Jan 2024 13:33
URI:	https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/6550

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