Factors associated with falls in community-dwelling older adults: an analysis based on subscales of the frailty screening index

Abstract

[Purpose] We aimed to obtain new findings by investigating the relationship between the presence or absence of falls and the results from the Frailty Screening Index (FSI), which can be easily carried out. [Participants and Methods] A total of 780 community-dwelling older adults (age ≥65 years) were classified based on whether they had fallen in the past year as those who had fallen at least once (fall group), and those who had not (non-fall group). We compared the study groups using sub-items of the FSI to extract more specific fall-related factors. The FSI is a questionnaire that comprises five items with simple ‘yes/no’ responses. [Results] The following three out of five sub-items of the FSI were extracted as fall-related factors: 1) “no” to the question, “Do you do physical exercise, like walking, at least once a week?”; 2) “yes” to the question, “Do you think you walk slower than before?”; and 3) “yes” to the question, “Have you felt tired for no reason (in the past two weeks)?” [Conclusion] The study results suggest the significance of paying attention to participant responses to the sub-items on the FSI, instead of merely determining their frailty risk based on their total score.