Factors Associated with Risk of Falls Among Community- Dwelling Elderly in Flat PPR Kuala Lumpur

Boon, Jenny Zean Lea (2022) Factors Associated with Risk of Falls Among Community- Dwelling Elderly in Flat PPR Kuala Lumpur. [Project Paper] (Submitted)

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Abstract

Falls have a substantial influence on the health of community-dwelling older people. Not to forget the risk of falls and factors associated with fall risk which is understudied and has not been fully addressed in the literature among the local and global research. Hence, this cross-sectional study aimed to determine the factors associated with risk of falls among community-dwelling elderly residents in Flat PPR Kuala Lumpur. A total of 97 eligible community-dwelling elderly were recruited from four flat PPR in Kuala Lumpur through the multiple stage simple random sampling. The study was conducted face-to-face to acquire information on sociodemographic and socioeconomic as well as other variables. Fried Frailty Phenotype, Malay language version of the protocol for Frailty Assessment Components: Standardized Protocols, Physical Activity Scale for Elderly in Malay Version (PASE-M), Lawton Instrumental Activities of Daily Living – Malay Version (Lawton IADL-MV), Elderly Cognitive Assessment Questionnaire – Malay Version (ECAQ-MV), Mini Nutritional Assessment Short Form – Malay Version (MNA-SF-MV) and Berg Balance Scale – Malay Version (BBS-MV) were used to assess the frailty status, functional status, cognitive status, risk of malnutrition and risk of falls in the participants, respectively. The IBM SPSS Statistics version 26 was used for statistical analysis with a significance level set at p< 0.05. The mean age of the participants was 68 ± 6 years, ranging from 60 to 81 years old which made up 26.8% of men and 73.2% of women. A large proportion of participants were Malay (88.7%), followed by Indian (9.3%) and Chinese (2.1%). Besides, 73.2% of the participants were pre-frail, 24.7% were frail, and only 2.1% were robust. A total of 44.3% of participants were functional dependent, 9.3% were cognitively impaired and 29.9% were at risk of malnutrition. The proportion of falls among community-dwelling elderly in this study was 7.1% while 14.4% of them were at risk of falls. In this study, factors that were found to be significantly associated with risk of falls were age (r = -0.407, p < 0.001), ethnicity (p = 0.001), educational level (p = 0.003), frailty status (r = -0.315, p = 0.002) and cognitive status (rs = 0.264, p = 0.009). There were no significant associations were found between gender, marital status, living arrangement, employment status, functional status, and malnutrition risk with risk of falls among community-dwelling elderly. It is critical to focus on assessing the risk of fall among community-dwellers despite the presence of fall history while providing diagnosis and treatments to older people from time to time as well creating public awareness about the issues in an aging culture. In order to have a better comprehension, future study is needed to verify the above factors to ameliorate risk of falls among community-dwelling elderly.

Item Type:	Project Paper
Faculty:	Faculty of Medicine and Health Science
Depositing User:	Mr Khoirul Asrimi Md Nor
Date Deposited:	07 Aug 2023 01:06
Last Modified:	07 Aug 2023 01:06
URI:	http://psaspb.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/994

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