Overactive Bladder significantly associated with falls in Older Adults
Falls leading to physical trauma and restriction of activity are among the principal causes of morbidity in the elderly. In a study, researchers have reported that both wet and dry overactive bladder was significantly associated with falls. They recommend physicians for earlier intervention by simple questionnaire to prevent fall among this population. The study findings were published in The Journal of Urology on January 01, 2021.
About 40% of all serious fall injuries among the elderly resulted in
hospital admission and, after hospitalization, 30–40% of these patients are transferred to a nursing home. As a consequence, the health care costs associated with falls and fall-related injuries are high. These facts highlight the importance of further investigation into other predictable and preventable underlying risk factors for falls in older adults. Little is known about the fall risk of older adults with overactive bladder, especially in the absence of urgency incontinence. Therefore, researchers of Japan conducted a study to evaluate the impacts of overactive bladder with and without urgency incontinence (overactive bladder wet and overactive bladder dry) on the fall risk in older adults and investigated the importance of overactive bladder as a predictor of falls by using tree-based models.
It was a prospective cohort study of 630 community-dwelling, independent older adults of 75 years old or older who attended a health checkup in 2017 with a 1-year follow-up. Researchers used logistic regression models to assess the association between the overactive bladder (dry and wet) with a fall history, and future fall risk compared to no overactive bladder. They also used random forest and decision tree approach to examine the contribution of the overactive bladder as a predictor of falls.
Key findings of the study were:
- At baseline, the researchers noted that the prevalence of overactive bladder dry and overactive bladder wet was 15% and 14%, respectively.
- Upon multivariable logistic regression analysis, they found that both overactive bladder dry and overactive bladder wet were associated with a higher likelihood of prior falls (adjusted ORs vs no overactive bladder 2.03 and 2.21).
- They also found that the odds of a future fall within one year among the 363 participants without a fall history were 2.7- and 1.4-fold higher with OAB dry and wet, respectively.
- The tree-based model confirmed that overactive bladder was an important predictor of falls in adults without a fall history with 83.6% accuracy and 81.8% AUC.
The authors concluded, "Overactive bladder, even in the absence of urgency incontinence, is an important predictor of falls in older adults with a low absolute fall risk."
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