Falls are often reported by individuals with knee osteoarthritis (OA). Despite the increasing number of falls, the contributors underlying the occurrence of falls in individuals with knee OA are poorly understood.
To examine the evidence of risk factors for falls in adults with knee OA.
Systematic Review METHODS: A systematic literature search was performed in nine electronic databases from inception to July 2016. Two reviewers screened articles using set inclusion and exclusion criteria. Observational study designs that included participants with knee OA and history of falls were considered. Results reported as odds ratios, relative risks, prevalence ratios or hazard ratios were extracted to identify the potential risk factors for falls. Included articles were assessed for methodological quality and level of evidence.
The electronic data search yielded 4382 studies related to falls and knee OA. A total of 11 studies were included in the review. The risk factors for falls in individuals with knee OA included impaired balance, muscle weakness, presence of comorbidities, and increasing number of symptomatic joint. Presence of knee pain was also identified as risk factors for falls; however, the strength of evidence was conflicting due to the inconsistency of the findings. Limited evidence was found for knee instability, impaired proprioception and use of walking aids.
This review provides an evidence of risk factors for falls in individuals with knee OA. Although moderate and limited evidence was found, identification of this risk factors can be valuable information both for clinicians and fall prevention program developers. Further studies are warranted to examine modifiable risk factors for falls in a knee OA population. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 15. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 19 September 2022.
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#2,914,171
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#215
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#49,033
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Outputs of similar age from PM&R
#13
of 88 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 30,068,821 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 90th percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,923 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 11.6. This one has done well, scoring higher than 88% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 88 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 85% of its contemporaries.
