A Meta-Analysis of Fall Risk in Older Adults With Alzheimer's Disease

Abstract

Objectives: Falls are the leading cause of injuries in older adults. Although it is well recognized that Alzheimer's disease (AD) increases the fall risk of older adults, the reported fall risk in people with AD varies drastically. The principal purpose of this study was to summarize and synthesize previous studies reporting fall risk-related metrics in people with AD.

Design: This was a meta-analysis.

Setting and participants: Thirty-one studies reporting relevant fall data among 4654 older adults with AD were included.

Methods: The fall prevalence, average number of falls, rate of recurrent fallers, and rate of injured fallers of included studies were meta-analyzed using random-effects models with inverse variance weights.

Results: The pooled annual fall prevalence in older people with AD is 44.27% with an average annual number of falls of 1.30/person and a yearly rate of recurrent fallers of 42.08%. The reported rate of injured fallers was 45.0%.

Conclusions and implications: Our results reinforce that people with AD experience a higher fall risk than their cognitively healthy counterparts. The pooled fall metrics in this meta-analysis extend our understanding of the fall risk in people with AD. In addition, standardized approaches are needed to report fall-related data for people with AD.

Keywords: Cognitive impairment; fall prevention; injured faller; recurrent faller.