Fall injuries account for a substantial part of the health burden among elderly persons, and they often affect life quality severely and impose large societal costs. Alcohol intoxication is a well-known risk factor for accidental injuries, but less is known about this association among elderly people. The aim of this study was to assess whether risk of fall injuries among the elderly is elevated with an intoxication-oriented drinking pattern.
These researchers applied a population case-control design using data from persons age 60 years and over in Norway. Cases comprised patients with fall injuries admitted to a hospital emergency department (n = 424), and controls were participants in general population surveys (n = 1859). Drinking pattern was assessed from self-reports of drinking frequency and intoxication frequency. Age and gender-adjusted association between fall injury and drinking pattern was estimated in logistic regression models. Fall injuries were considered alcohol-related if blood alcohol concentration exceeded 0.01% and/or the patient reported alcohol intake within 6 hours prior to injury.
These results showed that the risk of fall injuries was highly elevated among those reporting drinking to intoxication monthly or more often (OR = 10.2, 95% CI 5.5–19.0). Among cases, the vast majority of those with alcohol-related fall injuries (64 of 68) reported drinking to intoxication.
A drinking pattern comprising alcohol intoxication elevated the risk of fall injuries among elderly people. As alcohol use is a modifiable risk factor, the findings suggest a potential to curb the number of fall injuries and their consequences by employing effective strategies to prevent intoxication drinking among the elderly. In general, screening and brief intervention in primary and some specialty healthcare services have been shown to be an effective measure to reduce hazardous drinking, and as these healthcare services are widely used among the elderly, these settings seem promising for identifying and modifying hazardous drinking in this age group. Also in the specialist health services, brief interventions, including motivational interviewing, seem a promising strategy to reduce hazardous drinking in cases of alcohol induced, or related, health harms. In this respect, findings in this study suggest that identification of fall-injured patients with a positive blood alcohol screen and/or report of alcohol consumption shortly prior to the injury, appears to be an appropriate point of departure for such intervention.
Source: Bye EK, Bogstrand ST, Rossow I. The importance of alcohol in elderly’s hospital admissions for fall injuries: a population case-control study. Nordisk Alkohol Nark. 2022;39(1):38-49. doi: 10.1177/14550725211015836.
