Brody E M, Kleban M H, Moss M S, Kleban F
J Am Geriatr Soc. 1984 Dec;32(12):877-82. doi: 10.1111/j.1532-5415.1984.tb00886.x.
Falls among elderly residents are a major concern of facilities caring for the aged. A group of institutionalized women with senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (N = 60; mean age 83) were studied longitudinally and evaluated annually on 21 variables of physical, social, emotional, self-care, and cognitive functioning. A substudy of falls they experienced used data from two such annual evaluations. Clinical ratings by the interdisciplinary team estimated 1) the women's changes in function during the preceding year and 2) the current levels of the women's functioning. Separate regressions for each of the two years returned identical significant patterns indicating that ratings of physical vigor were significantly related to number of falls. Those women who had been among the most vigorous in the group but who had shown significant declines in the preceding year were the most vulnerable to falls; women who had been rated as the least vigorous but whose levels of vigor had been stable during the year tended to have fewer falls. Falling therefore appears to be related to the process of decline in vigor among those in the group whose levels of vigor were higher initially. There were corresponding significant declines in emotional and cognitive scales.
老年居民跌倒问题是养老机构主要关注的问题。对一组患有阿尔茨海默型老年痴呆症的女性（N = 60；平均年龄83岁）进行了纵向研究，并每年对她们身体、社交、情感、自我护理和认知功能的21项变量进行评估。对她们经历的跌倒情况进行的一项子研究使用了两次此类年度评估的数据。跨学科团队的临床评分估计了：1）这些女性在前一年的功能变化；2）这些女性目前的功能水平。对这两年分别进行的回归分析得出了相同的显著模式，表明身体活力评分与跌倒次数显著相关。那些在群体中最有活力但在前一年出现显著下降的女性最容易跌倒；那些被评为最缺乏活力但活力水平在这一年保持稳定的女性跌倒次数往往较少。因此，跌倒似乎与该群体中最初活力水平较高者的活力下降过程有关。情绪和认知量表也出现了相应的显著下降。
