Cochrane review: What actually reduces falls in older people?

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By Olivia Bowthorpe

Tailoring fall-prevention measures to individual patients may offer no significant benefit, according to a Cochrane review.

Personalised interventions based on an individual's risks may slightly reduce the falls rate and risk of recurrent falls but may have little or no effect on the risk of falling compared with usual care (no special falls prevention treatment), and the benefit mostly disappears when compared with exercise or basic fall-prevention advice.

The review looked at 110 randomised controlled trials involving 48,919 older people. It found that 'multifactorial' tailored falls prevention programmes may slightly reduce falls, compared with usual care.

Common components of these programmes are improvements to environmental safety risks such as slipping, assistive technology such as a walking aid, exercise to build muscle strength, or a review of any medication that might increase fall risk.

These tailored interventions seemed to reduce the rate of falls by about 24% compared with usual care, but the evidence was considered 'low certainty'.