JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Falls were part of the world top 10 health conditions associated with disability in people aged over 60 years old. They represent also more than two-third of adverse advents in hospital and mainly affect patients aged 65 and over. Physical activity is a central intervention in the framework of fall prevention program in the older persons because it contributes to the restoration and / or maintenance of muscle function and its tone but also of the mobility of the joints, thus improving balance and walking. Whatever the preventive strategy adopted, i.e., the evaluation associated with a mono or multifactorial intervention, the category of persons targeted, and the place of application (home, institution or hospital), it is important to ensure that the proposed intervention is practicable for the person and / or the group of individuals concerned.

Objective:

The primary objective is to study the feasibility of carrying out a physical activity intervention composed of exercises with three levels of difficulty in older patients, categorized according to their risk of falling (i.e., low, moderate, and high), and hospitalized in geriatric acute care unit.

Methods:

This is an open-label, unicentre, non-randomized, feasibility prospective clinical trial. There is no comparator group. The intervention tested in this study is a physical activity intervention, based on the motor acts of daily life and focused on strengthening the muscles of the lower limbs and improving postural balance. It consists of three types of physical exercises: staying out of the bed three hours, standing balance exercises, and sit-to-stand transfer exercises. It is offered and adapted to three categories of patients classified according to their risk of falling (low, moderate or high fall risk). It is carried out from the second day of hospitalization following the assessment of the patient's risk of falling until the last day of hospitalization or at most until the 20th day of hospitalization if the patient is still hospitalized. The daily physical activity is carried out under the supervision of the paramedical team, more specifically of nurses and nursing assistants who: make the patient do physical activity, supervise the realization, note the total and/or partial performance of physical activity, and monitor the completion of the physical activity intervention throughout the duration of hospitalization or at most until the 20th day.

Results:

NA

Conclusions:

We believe that this intervention in physical activity is relevant since it considers both the patient's level of fall risk and consequently proposes an adapted intervention, which aims, in part, to eliminate the context of hyper-sedentary lifestyle of the inpatients. If our hypotheses are verified, we are planning a larger-scale experiment in which we will study the effects of this intervention on the risk of falls during and after the hospitalization. Clinical Trial: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02393014.