Whether it is snowing or flat you are afraid of falling

  According to statistics, every year on snowy days, half of the patients in the trauma and burn emergency center of Beijing Jishuitan Hospital are injured because of falling after snow, among which middle-aged and elderly women are the majority, and there are 70 to 80 patients with wrist fractures in a day at most. The elderly and middle-aged women are the two groups of people who are most likely to fall and get injured when traveling in snowy weather.  However, children and men have a lower percentage of fall injuries, and they have the light of “motion control”. They have inherited the athletic talents of animals, not to mention that many children and men are fans of various sports. They are flexible, resilient, and quick to respond to the stress of a fall. The main reason why older people and women are prone to falls is that they have poor “motor control” and are slow to respond to the stress of a fall.  Clinically, a fall is defined as a person falling to the ground or being found lying on the ground.  Another definition of a fall is any unconscious, abnormal impact contact with a support surface, such as a chair, counter, or wall, with a change in “fall” position.  Injury and accident statistics for older adults show that falls are the seventh leading cause of death for people 75 and older, and the fall rate for people 65 and older is about 33% per year, with women more likely to fall than men.  What exactly causes them to lose their balance and fall?  Previously, studies on loss of balance in older adults have looked to define an independent factor for falls in older adults, such as vertigo, postural hypotension, and sensory neuropathy.  However, more research data confirm that falls in older adults have multiple factors, including external environmental factors and intrinsic factors – such as physiological musculoskeletal muscle factors and pathological factors.  Studies have confirmed that older adults over the age of 75 tend to fall at home, while those between the ages of 70 and 75 often fall and suffer more serious injuries away from home.  American controlled movement experts Rubinstein and Josephson in “Principles and Practice of Motor Control” suggest that the elderly living in the community have 11 fall-related risk factors: 1, muscle strength decay; 2, elderly with a history of falls are more likely to fall; 3, loss of balance; 4, walking component deficit; 5, use of assistive devices, such as crutches and walkers are more likely to fall; 6, visual field deficit; 7, osteoarthritis; 8 , poor ability to perform activities of daily living; 9, depressive states or depression; 10, cognitive impairment such as dementia; 11, excessive age (>80 years).  In addition, environmental factors can also increase the risk of falls: 1, going up and down stairs; 2, astringent carpets; 3, slippery floors; 4, insufficient light.  We would like to especially suggest that elderly patients with joint surgery hip surgery are at high risk of falling 1 to 6 months after discharge from the hospital. According to the fall rate statistics of hip fracture patients after discharge, researcher McKee et al. showed that 17.5% of hip fracture patients would fall again in a 2-month follow-up study of 57 patients. Researcher Korang et al. reported that 19% of community-dwelling older adults with an initial hip fracture had a second hip or pelvic fracture secondary to the initial hip fracture within 1 year. Researchers Shumway et al. followed 90 elderly patients hospitalized with hip fractures due to falls, and 6 months after discharge, 53.3% had 1 or more falls.  This is because older adults who are discharged from the hospital with injuries caused by falls have a much reduced ability to live independently and have poorer balance and mobility. Researchers found that two factors were most likely to cause a secondary fall: patients with a history of falls prior to this fall and patients who were already using walking aids due to mobility limitations were most likely to have a fall within 6 months of discharge from the hospital.  Therefore, American and British medical experts created the doctrine of “Principles and Practice of Motor Control” to identify the risk of recurrent falls in patients hospitalized for hip fracture recovery in the early assessment of hip fractures. Develop an individual plan to prevent the risk of recurrent falls. For patients at high risk of re-fall, physiotherapy training guided by the Principles and Practice of Motion Control doctrine is conducted after the fracture has healed.  The core significance of this training is focused on 3 points: 1) improving the patient’s balance; 2) enhancing the patient’s motor function; and 3) assessing their survival environment to resist secondary falls.