DOI: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-28513/v1
Background: Fall poses major health problems to the elderly and may potentially lead to various levels of injuries. At present, the sample sizes from most of the epidemiological studies on falls in Chinese elderly are limited and studies on fall risks are not comprehensive. This study is to understand the prevalence of fall and investigate the possible risk factors with fall focusing on the aged 60 years and older in China to shed light on designing interventions targeting this vulnerable population.
Methods : Data were derived from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) based on multistage sampling designs, with participants aged 60 and older. The final sample size is 9692. We performed logistic regression analyses to examine the relationship between fall and its influencing factors.
Results : Of the 9692 respondents, 1697 (17.5%) had falls within the last 2 years. Our findings indicated that the participants with disability, chronic condition, age 75 years above, poor health status, sleep duration of≤5h and taking antihypertensive medication were more likely to report falls. A dose response relationship was found between depression, satisfaction with life and risk of fall.
Conclusions: After adjusting confounders, our study showed that age, sleep duration, disability, chronic condition, taking antihypertensive medication, self-assessed health status, depression and satisfaction with life were found to be significantly associated with fall in Chinese elderly. Such significant associations emphasize the need for evidence-based prevention and interventions for fall targeting these factors. Future prospective longitudinal study is warranted to investigate the causal relationship between falls and the influencing factors.
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