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Preoperative falls predict postoperative falls, functional decline, and surgical complications

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Gil Ben-Horin
Published: Oct 16, 2016

The Joint Commission (United States) established fall prevention as one of its national patient safety goals in 2015. A prospective cohort study at Barnes Jewish Hospital performed a study with two objectives: to characterise postoperative falls, including their rate, timing, associated injuries, and risk factors, and to determine whether preoperative falls independently predicted postoperative falls (primary outcome), functional dependence, quality of life, complications and readmission. The authors conclude that “postoperative falls are common both during and after hospitalization, and preoperative falls are a main indicator for these events. Preoperative falls also predict functional dependence and in-hospital complications better than commonly-used measures. Therefore, a history of preoperative falls is a valuable and pragmatic tool, and should become part of routine preoperative assessment.” Their findings also suggest that perioperative fall interventions should be geared towards patients of all ages. Demographic and confounder variables, including those from the preoperative assessment visit, were obtained from MetaVision.

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