Fall related hospital admissions among seniors in Poland in 2010

BACKGROUND: Falls among elderly people causing hospitalization are considered one of the most important public health problems. Our objective was to analyse fall related hospital admissions among seniors (> or = 65 years old) in Poland in 2010. The analyses were conducted with regard to gender, place of residence and age. Additionally, the health consequences of falls among elderly people were studied. Injuries and other consequences of external causes, were expressed in the form of three-character ICD-10 codes representing the underlying disease (S00-T98).

METHODS: Data on hospital admissions resulting from falls among seniors were obtained from the database held at the Department - Centre for Monitoring and Analyses of Population Health Status and Health Care System by the National Institute of Public Health - National Institute of Hygiene.

RESULTS: Analysis has shown that the hospitalization ratio due to falls is much higher for women than for men. On average, 1 024 per 100 000 women are hospitalized due to a fall, while the number for men is 649. For every analysed age group women are at a higher risk of hospitalization due to a fall than men. In 2010 nearly 70% of hospital admissions of elderly people due to a fall were caused by a fall on the same level as a result of tripping or slipping (31 712 hospitalizations). No differences in relation to gender were observed. Risk of hospitalization due to a fall increases with age. For people over 80 years of age it is 2.5 times higher than for people in the 65-69 age group (1 459 and 570 per 100 000 respectively). It was observed that the length of hospital stay increases with age. There were no significant differences between the number of hospitalizations depending on the place of residence. The analysis showed that differences in the length of stay for women and men are statistically significant. However, there was no statistically significant difference between the lengths of stay depending on a place of residence. Almost one-third of hospitalizations (31.4%) resulted from femur fracture (14 356 hospitalizations). Women are more likely to suffer from a femur fracture.

CONCLUSIONS: A comparison of results of research conducted, among other countries, in the United States, The Netherlands, and Denmark, as well as Polish demographic prognosis, has shown that an increase of fall related hospital admissions among senior citizens is to be expected in Poland in oncoming years.