Frailty as a Risk Factor for Falls Among Community Dwelling People: Evidence From a Meta‐Analysis

PURPOSE: This study was conducted to investigate the relationships between different frailty stages and the fall incidence rates of community-dwelling older adults. The differences between various frailty indicators regarding assessment accuracy of the fall incidence rates of community-dwelling elders were also analyzed. Finally, the relationship between frailty and recurrent falls was explored. METHODS: This study comprised a systematic literature review and meta-analysis. Two researchers independently examined and extracted the related literature. The key search terms included frailty, frail, fall, older people, older, geriatric, and senior. The literature sampling period was from January 2001 to December 2016. The quality of each paper was assessed according to the guidelines of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). The databases of the Cochrane Library, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), PubMed, and MEDLINE were used to conduct a systematic literature search by using the random effect mode to analyze the compiled papers. FINDINGS: A total of 102,130 community-dwelling older adults ≥65 years of age and 33,503 older adults who had experienced a fall were compiled to investigate the relationship between frailty and falls. The meta-analysis results revealed that compared with robust older adults, frail older adults demonstrated the greatest risk for falls, followed by prefrail older adults. Furthermore, the use of different frailty indicators to predict the fall incidence rates of older adults yielded nonsignificantly different outcomes. In short, studies of either cardiovascular health or osteoporotic fracture indicators are effective for predicting the risk for falls in older people. Finally, this study confirmed that compared with robust older adults, frail older adults were more likely to experience recurrent falls. CONCLUSIONS: Frailty is a crucial healthcare topic of people with geriatric syndromes. Frail older adults are likely to experience recurrent falls. In addition, the evidence-based study indicated that once older people enter the prefrail stage, they are likely to experience falls. Therefore, older adults should be evaluated for the possibility of geriatric syndromes such as frailty, which may be addressed to reduce the risk for bone fractures and death. CLINICAL RELEVANCE: Professional nurses should use frailty assessment indicators as early as possible to evaluate the possibility of frailty in community-dwelling older people. Meanwhile, effective frailty prevention strategies should be applied to prevent frailty, thereby reducing the incidence of falls and enhancing older persons' quality of life.