Guidelines for the prevention of falls in people over 65

doi:10.1136/bmj.321.7267.1007

BMJ 2000;321:1007-1011 ( 21 October )

Education and debate

Guidelines for the prevention of falls in people over 65

General practice p 994

Gene Feder, professor ^a, Colin Cryer, senior research fellow ^b, Sheila Donovan, facilitator ^a, Yvonne Carter, professor ^a, on behalf of the guidelines' development group.

^a Department of General Practice and Primary Care, St Bartholomew's and Royal London Medical School, Queen Mary and Westfield College, London E1 4NS, ^b Centre for Health Services Studies, University of Kent, Tunbridge Wells, Kent TN3 0TG

Correspondence to: G Feder g.s.feder@mds.qmw.ac.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Older people frequently fall. This is a serious public health problem, with a substantial impact on health and healthcarecosts.¹ These guidelines translate trial evidence about preventionof falls into recommendations that can be implemented in differentsettings, with the aim of reducing the rate of falls and injuriousfalls in people over 65 (see boxes ² ³ ).

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Methods

We updated two previous systematic reviews to include any new evidence up to March 1998. ⁴ ⁵ We electronically searchedMedline for all randomised controlled trials and systematic reviewsby using the terms fall(s), accidental falls, fracture, elderly,aged, older, and senior. We followed up relevant references inpapers, and we contacted researchers in prevention of falls forinformation about other trial evidence and about studies fromjournals not catalogued by the National Library of Medicine. Forinclusion, studies had to be randomised controlled trials of interventionsdesigned to minimise or prevent exposure to the risk . . . [Full text of this article]

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