Introduction: Recurrent falling is a major clinical milestone in Parkinsonian syndromes. It has a detrimental impact on quality of life, further prognosis, and life expectancy.
Aim of the study: To improve fall management and prevention, we aimed at identifying clinical parameters predicting fall frequency. To this end, we retrospectively analysed records of fall events of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), or progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), or multiple system atrophy (MSA), during their two-week inpatient stay at the Parkinson-Klinik Ortenau, Wolfach, Germany. This data served as an objective proxy for patients' fall frequency and allowed us to estimate the impact of several demographic and clinical variables on the occurrence of falling.
Material and methods: Of 2,111 patients admitted to our hospital, 1,810 presented with PD, 191 with PSP, and 110 with MSA. We employed a multiple (quasi-) poisson regression analysis to model the fall frequency as a function of various demographic variables (age at diagnosis, gender) and clinical variables (disease duration and sub-type, motor and cognitive impairment, autonomic dysfunction).
Results: Statistically significant predictors for falls in PD were cognitive impairment, motor impairment, and autonomic dysfunction. In PSP, significant predictors for falls were motor and autonomic dysfunction, while in MSA only disease duration predicted falls, but with only marginal statistical significance.
Conclusions: Our results stress the importance of different factors in predicting falls in the different types of Parkinsonian syndrome. Preventive interventions should address these disease-specific targets for optimal success.
Keywords: Parkinson’s disease; autonomic dysfunction; cognitive impairment; falls; multiple system atrophy; progressive supranuclear palsy.