@article{ref1,
title="Balance impairment not predictive of falls in geriatric rehabilitation wards",
journal="Journals of gerontology. Series A: Biological sciences and medical sciences",
year="2008",
author="Haines, T. and Kuys, Suzanne S. and Morrison, Greg and Clarke, J. and Bew, Paul",
volume="63",
number="5",
pages="523-528",
abstract="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.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1079-5006",
doi="",
url="http://dx.doi.org/"
}