• Physical Therapy Korea
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2023

Background: Like many other countries, falls and related injuries in older adults are great concerns in South Korea. In particular, falls are common in medical institutions, often causing the increase of the length of hospitalization. Objects: The purpose of this review was to help understand and address falls in hospitalized individuals in South Korea. Methods: The review was conducted on literature published in Korean from 2010 to 2022, searched in the Korea Citation Index and PubMed. Keywords used for the search were as follows: falls, fall risk, fall risk assessment, hospital, inpatient, intervention, Korea, and prevention. Results: A total of 54 articles were found and reviewed. The most common place of fall accidents was the inpatient room, where there were many cases of falls while walking. Loss of balance was the most common cause of falls, and many falls occurred in patients admitted to the internal medicine. Furthermore, a risk of falling increased with the type of medications taken. In terms of tools to assess patients' fall risk, the Morse Fall Scale (MFS) was commonly used. Patient-specific fall prevention activities were common to address falls, and they decreased the frequency of falls and the fear of falling. Factors influencing the effectiveness of the fall prevention activities included attitudes toward falls, education, environmental factors, patient safety culture, and self-efficacy in preventing falls. Conclusion: Our results should help understand and address falls and injuries in medical institutions.

• Physical Therapy Korea
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.107-117
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• 2001

Falls are the most serious health problems in elderly population. They are a major cause of premature death, physical injury, immobility, psychosocial dysfunction, and nursing home placement. To reduce the alarming rate of falls and related excessive mortality and morbidity, efforts must be made to detect persons at risk of falling and to prevent or reduce the frequency of falls. To facilitate such approaches, it is essential to find the cause of falling (and under what conditions) of the elderly and the factors that are associated with risk of falling. This study was aimed at designing interventions that minimize risk of falling by ameliorating contributing factors while maintaining or improving patient's mobility.

• Physical Therapy Korea
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.51-60
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• 2004

Falls are common, costly, and a leading cause of death among older adults. The major predisposing factors of a fall may include age-related deterioration in the dynamic system composed of auditory, somatosensory, vestibular, visual, musculoskeletal, and neuromuscular subsystems. Older adults with a history of frequent falls demonstrated significant reductions in gait velocity, muscle force production, and balance performance. These altered neuromechanical characteristics may be further exaggerated when faced with conflicting multisensory conditions. Despite the important contribution of multisensory function on the sensorimotor system during postural and locomotor tasks, it remains unclear whether multisensory intervention will produce dynamic balance improvement during locomotion in older adults with a history of frequent falls. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to address important factors associated with falls in elderly adults and provide theoretical rationale for a multisensory intervention program model.

• Child Health Nursing Research
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.252-259
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• 2023

Purpose: Falls are a common cause of unintentional injuries in infants. This study was conducted to examine the patterns of healthcare utilization following infant falls in South Korea. Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive study utilized an online survey designed to gather information regarding the general characteristics of parents and infants, fall-related variables, and healthcare use. Results: The most serious falls identified by parents occurred at an average infant age of 6.97 months. Most fall incidents took place indoors (95.7%), and many occurred under the supervision of caregivers (68.0%). Following the fall, 36.4% of the participants used healthcare services. Logistic regression analysis revealed that healthcare use following an infant fall was significantly associated with being a firstborn child (odds ratio [OR]=5.32, 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.19-15.28) and falling from a caregiver's arms (OR=4.22; 95% CI, 1.45-13.68). Conclusion: To prevent and decrease the frequency of infant falls, improvements are needed in both the domestic environment and parenting approaches.

• The Journal of Korean Physical Therapy
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.157-167
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• 2003

Falls are a leading cause of injury, disability and death among people older than 65. Even without injury, falls cause a loss of confidence that results in reduced physical activity, increased dependency and social withdrawal. Fall prevention in the eldery people is a multifaced task that includes both the identification of risk factors and their modification strategies. Fall risk factors have been identified as both intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic factors are those related to the physical and cognitive function of the person. Extrinsic factors are those which are included in the environmental hazards of everyday life. Combinations of interventions aimed at modifying both intrinsic and extrinsic risk factors can result in significant fall prevention in the geriatric population. This article selectively reviews the literature reporting exercise intervention to improve strength, balance and mobility.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.17 no.9
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• pp.2377-2398
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• 2023

In our daily lives, we engage in a variety of tasks that rely on our senses, such as seeing. Blindness is the absence of the sense of vision. According to the World Health Organization, 2.2 billion people worldwide suffer from various forms of vision impairment. Unfortunately, blind people face a variety of indoor and outdoor challenges on a daily basis, limiting their mobility and preventing them from engaging in other activities. Blind people are very vulnerable to a variety of hazards, including falls. Various barriers, such as stairs, can cause a fall. The Internet of Things (IoT) is used to track falls and send a warning message to the blind caretakers. One of the gaps in the previous works is that they were unable to differentiate between falls true and false. Treating false falls as true falls results in many false alarms being sent to the blind caretakers and thus, they may reject the IoT system. As a means of bridging this chasm, this paper proposes an intelligent shoe that is able to precisely distinguish between false and true falls based on three sensors, namely, the load scale sensor, the light sensor, and the Flex sensor. The proposed IoT system is tested in an indoor environment for various scenarios of falls using four models of machine learning. The results from our system showed an accuracy of 0.96%. Compared to the state-of-the-art, our system is simpler and more accurate since it avoids sending false alarms to the blind caretakers.

• Physical Therapy Rehabilitation Science
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.66-77
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• 2022

Objective: This study is a systematic review conducted to analyze the environmental factors that cause falls in the older adult. Design: Systematic review Methods: The study was conducted by searching the Research Information Sharing Service (RISS), Korean studies Information Service System (KISS), and Data Base Periodical Information Academic (DBpia) databases for literature published in South Korea up to July 2020. A total of 12 studies were selected for analysis based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results: The results of the analysis revealed that all the selected literature were surveys and the study subjects were 65 years of age and above. The sample size ranged from a minimum of 95 subjects to a maximum of 3,278. A total of eight tools were used to measure the environmental factors associated with falls. The prevalence and recurrence of falls increase with age and deterioration of health. Older adult individuals who experience falls encounter difficulties in recovering from impaired physical function and disability; moreover, in severe cases, falls may lead to death. Falls are largely associated with a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic (i.e., environmental) factors. The purpose of this study was to assess potential extrinsic risk factors for falls. Falls occur in indoor environments, such as washrooms, bathrooms and living rooms, and outdoor environments, including roads and stairways, depending on the season, time of day, and use of ambulatory aids. In such environments, falls are mainly caused by slipping and stuttering. Conclusions: Therefore, as the rate of fall is influenced by several factors, extrinsic factors should be improved by developing comprehensive accident prevention programs that address the improvement of environmental risk factors around places of residence to reduce risk factors among the older adult, who, especially, are at a high risk for falls.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Integrative Medicine
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.175-183
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• 2021

Purpose : Few studies have examined the relationship between elderly falls and quality of life (QOL) in a large general population. Furthermore, although many studies have investigated the relationships between socio-demographic factors and falls, relatively few studies have evaluated the associations of places and environments with QOL of fall. The purpose of the scheme was to identify the relationship between falls and QOL in a large sample of the elderly. Methods : This study used raw data from the 2013 Korean community health survey. A total of 228,781 people participated in the 2013 study among them 61.552 people were aged 65 or older. Authors also excluded 40 people whose QOL confirmation was unclear. Therefore, final analysis was conducted 61,512 senior citizens. The survey contained questions about the occurrence of falls, number of falls occurring per year, location of occurrence, and cause of falls. QOL was measured using the EQ-5D, an evaluation tool developed by the EuroQol group. Results : The results showed a statistically significantly lower QOL to little fear and full of fear as compared with no fear of falls (p<.05). The number of falls was statistically significantly lower in one, two, and three or more times, than in zero (i.e. no falls)(p<.05). In the falling environments, fall experience, but not related to lighting (p>.05), had a significant lower in QOL compared without the experience (p<.05). Conclusion : This study concluded that there is a strong connection between fall and QOL to the elderly, particularly regarding the number of occurrences, place, and environment. However, we found that an environment (e.g. the lack of lighting) might not affect QOL. It means that when the experts who make an effective tool or intervention may not need to consider indoor and outdoor darkness.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.11-20
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• 1990

Recorded injury identified the role of falls in producing injury througout all segments of the nation. The Economic and social costs arising from falls has been established in numerous sources, both nationally and from the intermational literature. Recorded injury also indicated the potential features of falls, the need for a basic understanding of the energy exchange mechanism involved and the subsequent rehabilitation processes required. It appears unlikely that any other major cause of injury has an etiology so little researched and consequently, so little understood, which in turn has prevented the development of an intervention strategy or a scientically based control technology of falls. This paper will emphasize how the postural changes of foot are related to slip/fall severity in different environmental conditions. Lidewise, we will examine the whole slip/fall cycle through the biomechanical parameters involved in a range of walking speed and floor slipperiness

• International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.314-320
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• 2024

Objectives: This study aimed to identify the prevalence of falls in community-dwelling older adults and to identify associated factors using the 2019 Community Health Survey. Methods: The original data was from the 2019 Community Health Survey, and the study sample comprised 1,642 older adults aged 65 years and older in Jeju province. Data collection was conducted from August 16 to November 20, 2019, through an interview done by a trained investigator. Respondents were queried about demographic characteristics, riding bicycles, hospital treatment due to an accident or poisoning in the previous year, fall experiences in the past year, fear of falling, self-management status, and pain and discomfort. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate for associations between potential risk factors and falls. Results: The prevalence of falls in this community-dwelling older adults was 13.1%. Falls were associated with riding bicycles (odds ratio = 4.7; 95% confidence interval: 2.26-9.81), fear of falling (odds ratio = 0.3; 95% confidence interval: 0.24-0.49), hospital treatment due to an accident or poisoning in the previous year (odds ratio = 7.8; 95% confidence interval: 5.02-12.19), self-management status (odds ratio = 0.6; 95% confidence interval: 0.34-0.89), and pain and discomfort (odds ratio = 0.6; 95% confidence interval: 0.40-0.87). Conclusions: We found that the prevalence of approximately about 13% of older adults living in a community has experienced falls. Based on the results of the study, we provided primary data to develop the care management intervention program to prevent falls and avoid risk factors that cause falls in community-dwelling older adults.