Comprehensive Intervention for Falls Prevention in the Elderly

Falls and related injuries among elderly people are a major public health problem worldwide.All older people with recurrent falls or assessed as being at increased risk of falling should be considered for an individualized multifactorial intervention.

In successful multifactorial intervention programmes the following specific components are common - against a background of the general diagnosis and management of causes and recognized risk factors:

• exercise
• home hazard assessment and intervention
• vision assessment and referral
• medications list review with modification/withdrawal We will address to 4000 randomly chosen patients from study population (elderly (65+) men and women, living in Beer-Sheva and Ofakim , Israel and belonging to Clalit HMO). This telephone interview will be conducted to reveal falls in last 12 months. The people who do fall (1 + falls) will be invited to research assistant.

In that meeting the research assistant will explain about the study aims and ask them to sign informed consent. Those who do not agree to participate - will be referred to their family doctor for further assessment.

Those who agree to participate in the study will fill in questionnaire about falls (causes, circumstance, results). All will pass through: cognitive assessment by the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), affective assessment by the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), functional assessment by Barthel Index (BI), visual assessment by Snellen charts and basic gait assessment by a "Timed get Up and Go" test (TU&G).