Blood pressure and falls in community-dwelling people aged 60 years and older in the VHM&PP cohort

BMC Geriatrics

Kilian Rapp¹  Hans Concin²  Barbara Rehberger²  Hanno Ulmer⁴  Andrea Kleiner¹  Gabriele Nagel²  Diana Klein³ 

[1] Institute of Epidemiology and Medical Biometry, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany;Agency for Social- and Preventive Medicine, Bregenz, Austria;Department of Clinical Gerontology, Robert-Bosch-Hospital, Stuttgart, Germany;Department of Medical Statistics, Informatics and Health Economics, Innsbruck Medical University, Innsbruck, Austria

关键词: Risk factors;    Hypotension;    Blood pressure;    Falls;   

Others  :  857673
DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2318-13-50

 received in 2012-10-31, accepted in 2013-05-10,  发布年份 2013

【 摘 要 】

Background

Falls are one of the major health problems in old people. Different risk factors were identified but only few epidemiological studies analysed the influence of conventionally measured blood pressure on falls. The objective of our study was to investigate the relationship between systolic and diastolic blood pressure and falls.

Methods

In 3,544 community-dwelling Austrian women and men aged 60 years and older, data on falls within the previous three months were collected by questionnaire. Blood pressure was measured by general practitioners within the Vorarlberg Health Monitoring and Prevention Programme (VHM&PP) 90 to 1095 days before the fall assessment. A multiple logistic regression analysis was conducted. The models were stratified by gender and adjusted by age, number of medical conditions and subjective feeling of illness.

Results

In total, 257 falls in 3,544 persons were reported. In women, high systolic and diastolic blood pressure was associated with a decreased risk of falls. An increase of systolic blood pressure by 10 mmHg and of diastolic blood pressure by 5 mmHg reduced the risk of falling by 9% (OR 0.91, 95% Cl 0.84-0.98) and 8% (OR 0.92, 95% Cl 0.85-0.99), respectively. In men, an increased risk of falls was observed in participants with low systolic or low diastolic blood pressure.

Conclusions

Blood pressure was associated with the risk of falls. Hypertensive values decreased the risk in women and low blood pressure increased the risk in men.

【 授权许可】

   
2013 Klein et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

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