Balance impairment not predictive of falls in geriatric rehabilitation wards.
BACKGROUND
Falls are common among hospital inpatients, particularly in rehabilitation wards. Standing balance impairment is widely held to be a contributing factor to falls, is a component of several falls risk screening tools, and has motivated the development of balance retraining programs for the reduction of in-hospital falls. Little rigorous investigation of the link between standing balance impairment and in-hospital falls has been undertaken.


METHODS
We identified optimal cut-off points of four commonly used balance measures (functional reach, Timed Up and Go, step test, and timed static stance) in a prospective multicenter cohort study. Admission data (n = 1373) were clustered and matched by center then randomly allocated to development and validation data sets.


RESULTS
Optimal cut-off points for each test were identified from the development data set. The predictive accuracy of all four balance tests was poor when the optimal cut-off was applied to the validation data set (Youden Index scores ranged between 0.02 and 0.15).


CONCLUSIONS
These findings do not support an association between admission standing balance and falls in a geriatric rehabilitation setting. This result has implications for content of falls risk screening tools and interventions to prevent falls in a geriatric rehabilitation population.
Division of Physiotherapy, School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.
Terry
T
Haines
Suzanne S
SS
Kuys
Greg
G
Morrison
Jane
J
Clarke
Paul
P
Bew
D000058:Accidental Falls / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D004856:Postural Balance; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011446:Prospective Studies; D012047:Rehabilitation Centers; D015203:Reproducibility of Results