@article{ref1,
title="Compliant sports floors and fall-related injuries: evidence from a residential care setting and updated meta-analysis for all patient care settings",
journal="Injury prevention",
year="2022",
author="Gustavsson, Johanna and Nilson, Finn and Bonander, Carl",
volume="ePub",
number="ePub",
pages="ePub-ePub",
abstract="BACKGROUND: Compliant flooring may prevent fall injuries in residential care, but evidence is inconclusive. We investigate compliant sports floors and fall-related injuries in a residential care setting and update a meta-analysis from a recent systematic review on compliant flooring. <br><br>METHODS: A non-randomised study comparing outcomes in a residential care unit that installed sports flooring in bedrooms with four units with regular flooring in a Norwegian municipality (n=193). Data on falls were collected for a period of 46 months (323 falls on sports flooring; 414 on regular flooring). Outcomes were injurious falls per person bed-day, falls per person bed-day and injury risks per fall. Confounding was adjusted for using Andersen-Gill proportional hazards and log-binomial regression models. Random-effects inverse variance models were used to pool estimates. <br><br>RESULTS: Injurious fall rates were 13% lower in the unit with sports flooring (adjusted HR (aHR): 0.87 (95% CI: 0.55 to 1.37)). There was limited evidence of adverse effects on fall rates (aHR: 0.93 (95% CI: 0.63 to 1.38)) and the injury risk per fall was lower in fall events that occurred on sports floors (adjusted relative risk (RR): 0.75 (95% CI: 0.53 to 1.08)). Pooling these estimates with previous research added precision, but the overall pattern was the same (pooled RR for injurious falls: 0.66 (95% CI: 0.39 to 1.12); fall rates: 0.87 (95% CI: 0.68 to 1.12); injury risks per fall: 0.71 (95% CI: 0.52 to 0.97)). <br><br>CONCLUSION: Sports floors may be an alternative to novel shock-absorbing floors in care settings; however, more research is needed to improve precision.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1353-8047",
doi="10.1136/ip-2022-044713",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/ip-2022-044713"
}