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Balance Impairment Not Predictive of Falls in Geriatric Rehabilitation Wards

¹ Division of Physiotherapy, School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.
² Physiotherapy Department, Princess Alexandra Hospital, Brisbane, Australia.
³ School of Physiotherapy and Exercise Science, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia.
⁴ St. Andrews War Memorial Hospital, Brisbane, Australia.
⁵ The Prince Charles Hospital, Brisbane, Australia.

Address correspondence to Suzanne Kuys, B Phty, School of Physiotherapy and Exercise Science, Griffith University, Gold Coast Campus, PMB 50, Gold Coast Mail Centre, QLD 9726, Australia. E-mail: s.kuys{at}griffith.edu.au

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.

Key Words: Falls • Predicting falls • Predictive value of tests • Rehabilitation