Orthopaedic complications of falls in elderly patients: a brief review

Abstract

Falls are frequent and often cause morbidity, mortality, and disability that require regular nursing. Most of these falls are associated with one or more identifiable risk factors, such as weakness, unsteady gait, confusion and medication use. Usually, it occurs due to a combination of multiple risk factors, such as imbalance, degenerative diseases, porotic bone, and metabolic disturbances. Though in the orthopaedic field, falls will most often result in injury such as femoral neck and proximal humerus fractures, all other parts of the body may also be affected due to various mechanisms of injury. As a disabling phenomenon, fractures due to falls in elderly may then proceed to series of complications, from early to late complications, from local (such as nonunion, muscle atrophy, disuse osteoporosis, etc) to systemic complications (such as pressure sores, pneumonia, ulcers, urinary tract infection, ileus, etc). Therefore, prevention will play a critical role in this particular situation.