TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2008//
TI  - Balance impairment not predictive of falls in geriatric rehabilitation wards
JO  - Journals of gerontology. Series A: Biological sciences and medical sciences
A1  - Haines, T.
A1  - Kuys, Suzanne S.
A1  - Morrison, Greg
A1  - Clarke, J.
A1  - Bew, Paul
SP  - 523
EP  - 528
VL  - 63
IS  - 5
N2  - 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>
LA  - en
SN  - 1079-5006
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/
ID  - ref1
ER  -