Citation

Granacher U, Muehlbauer T, Gruber M. J. Aging Res. 2012; 2012: 708905.

Affiliation

Institute of Sport Science, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Seidelstra β e 20, 07749 Jena, Germany.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Hindawi)

DOI

10.1155/2012/708905

PMID

22315687

PMCID

PMC3270412

Abstract

A continuously greying society is confronted with specific age-related health problems (e.g., increased fall incidence/injury rate) that threaten both the quality of life of fall-prone individuals as well as the long-term sustainability of the public health care system due to high treatment costs of fall-related injuries (e.g., femoral neck fracture). Thus, intense research efforts are needed from interdisciplinary fields (e.g., geriatrics, neurology, and exercise science) to (a) elucidate neuromuscular fall-risk factors, (b) develop and apply adequate fall-risk assessment tools that can be administered in clinical practice, and (c) develop and design effective intervention programs that have the potential to counteract a large number of fall-risk factors by ultimately reducing the number of falls in the healthy elderly. This paper makes an effort to present the above-raised research topics in order to provide clinicians, therapists, and practitioners with the current state-of-the-art information.

Language: en