Multimorbidity increases the risk of falling among Indonesian elderly living in community dwellings and elderly home: a cross sectional study

Abstract

The prevalence of fall increases with increasing ages. Falling is significant health problem in elderly and the risk increases significantly when they have chronic diseases such as, cardiovascular diseases, metabolic problem, urogenital diseases, digestive diseases, respiratory diseases, musculoskeletal and malignant diseases. elderly also vulnerable on suffering multiple chronic illness. This study aimed to identify the influence of multimorbidity to the incidence of fall in elderly. A cross sectional approach was used for this research, and, based on simple random sampling, a total of 427 elderly individuals (>60 years old). The data collection was based on the use of one set of questionnaires consisting of the demographic characteristics (age, gender, education background and economic status), the list of fifteen common chronic illness including suffered by the elderly as the risk factor for fall, and the incidence of fall within the las 12 month as the outcome. This study demonstrated that fall incidence among the elderly is significantly linked to the presence of chronic illness. The number of chronic conditions is significantly influencing the incidence of fall among elderly. The elderly who have more than two of chronic illness likely to have fall 2 times higher that those who have less than two chronic illness.