FAU team receives $1 million grant to identify effective fall prevention strategies for older adults

Each second, an older individual in the USA falls and injures themselves, and each 20 minutes one in every of them dies from the fall. Greater than 30 p.c of adults 65 and older fall yearly and 25 p.c of them have reasonable to extreme accidents. These falls lead to 3 million visits to the emergency division, 800,000 hospitalizations and 30,000 deaths annually. The issue is very acute in Florida the place greater than 3.3 million residents are over age 65.

Though there are complete tips on fall prevention, most efforts on the major care degree and in emergency departments haven’t proven nice promise stopping harm. Furthermore, major care physicians hardly ever carry out advisable routine fall-risk evaluation and fall prevention strategies.

Researchers from Florida Atlantic College’s Schmidt Faculty of Drugs have obtained a $1 million grant from the Florida Medical Malpractice Joint Underwriting Affiliation for a two-year mission titled, “The Geriatric Emergency Division Fall Harm Prevention Venture (The GREAT FALL).”

The randomized managed research will examine a number of emergency department-based prevention strategies in older sufferers at excessive threat for recurrent falls and harm. The tailor-made multicomponent intervention will identify effective fall prevention strategies that concentrate on restricted sources to high-risk people who come to the emergency division to enhance affected person outcomes, enhance security, and cut back general prices of well being care.

The emergency division gives a possibility to goal efforts and maximize sources to cut back the chance of fall-related accidents. Importantly, older sufferers who’ve injured themselves after a fall and are available to the emergency division have a fair greater threat for recurrent falls and subsequent accidents. Subsequently, focusing on older people and their caregivers within the emergency division may present probably the most helpful return when restricted sources can be found to improve security in these people.”

Richard Shih, M.D., principal investigator, a professor of emergency drugs, and division director of the emergency drugs residency program, FAU Schmidt Faculty of Drugs

“The GREAT FALL” builds upon two prior FAU prevention tasks: “The GREAT STOP” to forestall head trauma in older adults on blood thinners; and the “STAR” program that included many several types of high-risk older sufferers. “The GREAT STOP” mission enrolled about 6,000 head harm sufferers amongst whom the overwhelming majority suffered their harm due to a floor degree fall. The work has led to quite a few essential insights relating to fall-related head harm within the older inhabitants.

Shih is main a collaborative group of emergency drugs and geriatric drugs researchers with huge expertise on this area. The team is collaborating with the Palm Seaside Well being Community’s Delray Medical Heart, which treats greater than 50,000 grownup sufferers in its emergency division and features a busy degree 1 trauma heart, the very best degree of trauma care out there.

The principle end result measure of the research will decide the speed of recurrent fall requiring an emergency division go to and fall-related harm over a six-month follow-up interval. Further secondary outcomes will embody varieties of fall-related accidents, fall-related deaths and all-cause deaths.

Research individuals can be randomized to three strategies: present care; a phone-based fall-prevention technique; and a home-visit fall prevention technique. The phone-based technique will embody offering the affected person and caregiver easy-to-read supplies earlier than they’re discharged from the emergency division and a structured cellphone name round 14 days after discharge. Each the home-visit fall prevention technique and cellphone technique are based mostly on the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention’s “Stopping Aged Accidents, Deaths & Accidents.”

“Florida is a perfect location to carry out this essential research because it has the very best share of geriatric sufferers within the U.S., and specifically, Palm Seaside County has greater than 365,000 residents age 65 and older, which makes up 24.4 p.c of the county’s inhabitants,” stated Julie G. Pilitsis, M.D., Ph.D., dean and vice chairman of medical affairs, FAU Schmidt Faculty of Drugs. “This mission will present very important information on the perfect strategies to forestall falls in high-risk people and enhance their security in addition to affected person outcomes.”

Co-investigators of the research are Lisa Clayton, D.O., an affiliate professor of emergency drugs and chair, FAU Division of Emergency Drugs; Joseph G. Ouslander, M.D., a professor of geriatric drugs, senior advisor to the dean, and editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society; Scott Alter, M.D., an assistant professor of emergency drugs and affiliate analysis director of FAU’s emergency drugs residency program; Joshua Solano, M.D., an affiliate professor of emergency drugs and director of high quality enchancment and affected person security, FAU’s emergency drugs residency program; and Patrick Hughes, D.O., an affiliate professor of emergency drugs and assistant program director, FAU’s emergency drugs residency program.