Falls in Older People and the Effects of Tai Chi

Abstract

Nowadays, falling is no longer regarded as a common, inevitable adverse consequence of aging but classified as one of the geriatric syndromes. The concept of a geriatric syndrome is not clearly defined yet, but all geriatric syndromes (e.g. falls, incontinence, frailty) have the same clinical conditions in common: high prevalence, multiple underlying factors and an association with substantial morbidity and poor outcome. Moreover, falling is increasingly regarded as a marker or sign of an underlying health problem amenable to treatment. In community-living older people, extensive research has shown that fall prevention strategies including exercises can be effective.However, some multifactorial interventions that were proven effective were not (cost-) effective in the Netherlands. Due to the variability among older community-living persons and in the aetiology of falls more research is needed to develop and implement (cost-) effective strategies in fall prevention. This thesis addresses several aspects regarding the effectiveness of Tai Chi - traditional Chinese exercises - in fall prevention and discusses various options concerning the prediction of falls. In this general introduction we describe the incidence and consequences of falls, risk factors and predictors for falls, Tai Chi and the aims and outline of this thesis