Incident falls impair ability to function in hip-fracture survivors: A prospective study of 95 elderly women

The present study focused on home-dwelling women successfully discharged back to the community after a fall-related fracture of the hip. We investigated the role of incident falls in affecting ability to function in activities of daily living. Ninety-five of 103 consecutive women without cognitive impairment were recruited during in-patient rehabilitation following their first hip fracture. Functional independence in activities of daily living was assessed by using the Barthel Index (BI) score at discharge from in-patient rehabilitation and at a 6-month follow-up. Nineteen of the 95 women sustained one or more falls during a median observation time of 187 days. At a Mann–Whitney test, both BI scores assessed at the 6-month follow-up and gains in BI scores during the follow-up were significantly lower in the 19 fallers than in the 76 non-fallers (p = 0.021 and p = 0.030, respectively), whereas no significant differences were found in baseline BI scores between the two groups. At linear multiple regression, we found a negative association between incident falls and both functional scores (p = 0.01) and their gains (p = 0.006) after adjustment for several confounders. We conclude that incident falls were significantly associated with a worse functional score in our sample of hip-fracture women.