Association between the severity of neurocognitive disorders and the seriousness of falls in the elderly

Abstract

Falls cause severe morbidity and mortality in people over 65 years old in all countries. Cognitive frailty is considered to be one of the risk factors for falls in the elderly. Approximately 60% of the elderly with neurocognitive disorders fall annually and this is two times more compared to elderly with no cognitive impairment. We already know that neurocognitive disorders and their severity are a risk factor for falls in older people. Few studies are conducted to investigate the association between the severity of neurocognitive disorders and the severity of falls. This study is therefore interested in investigating the association between the severity of neurocognitive disorders and the serious falls in the elderly. This is a non-interventional retrospective study of 100 patients admitted for fall in a geriatric hospital. The correlation between MMSE and fall severity remains uncertain. Serious falls are more frequent in patients with Parkinsonian syndromes, but this result is not statically significant. Polypharmacy remains very prevalent in our population with 70% of patients having more than four drugs. Polydrug use in our study was very high, with 70% of patients taking more than four medications. We did not find a statistically significant association between the severity of neurocognitive disorders evaluated with the MMSE and the serious falls. More studies with tailored neurocognitive testing are needed to investigate the link between executive function disorders and the serious of falls.