Abstract
BackgroundExercise interventions focusing on balance and strength training have been shown to be effective for falls prevention. The aim of this 20-year register-based follow-up was to examine whether long-term participation in recreational female gymnastics is associated with a lower risk of medically-attended injurious falls.MethodsHealth care register data of 187 women (103 recreational gymnasts and 84 sedentary controls) from the original cohort of 243 women were assessed. The mean age (sd) at baseline was 62.8 (5.4) years and the mean follow-up time was 19.4 (2.7) years (range from 5.6 to 21.0 years).Injurious falls were scrutinized from medical records. An injurious fall was defined as an event in which falling was mentioned as a reason for making contact with health-care professionals. Negative binomial regression was used to estimate incidence rate ratios (IRR) for injurious falls, and Cox-regression models for calculating hazard ratios (HR) for injured fallers with the control group as reference.ResultsRecreational gymnasts had about 30% less injurious falls compared to controls, the mean IRR (95% CI) being 0.71 (0.51 to 0.96). The HR for injured fallers was 0.73 (0.52 to 1.02) favoring the recreational gymnasts. There were no statistically significant between-group differences for fractures.ConclusionsLong-term recreational gymnastics appears to reduce the risk of injurious falls in old age.
Highlights
MethodsHealth care register data of 187 women (103 recreational gymnasts and 84 sedentary controls) from the original cohort of 243 women were assessed
Exercise interventions focusing on balance and strength training have been shown to be effective for falls prevention
History of falls is a strong indicator for increased risk of fractures [5], and preventing falls is crucial in the prevention of injuries and fractures in the older population [6]
Summary
Participants At baseline, all participants were healthy, postmenopausal, non-smoking women aged from 55 to 83 years. Be it noted that this 20-year follow-up focused solely on medical records without any personal contact with the former participants Procedure This 20-year follow-up was conducted for all women who were still living in Tampere and had participated in the original study in 1997 [19]. From the original cohort of 243 women, 187 (77%, 103 recreational gymnasts and 84 sedentary controls) were included in this registerbased follow-up study. The Pegasos patient medical records of the City of Tampere (Pegasos Patient Information System, CGI, Finland) were scrutinized for fall-related health services utilization including hospitalizations for all participants during the follow-up period starting from September 1997 to April 2018; the years between 1997 and 2002 were manually examined from paper files, while more recent data was available in digital format. P-values were 2-sided and those less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant
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