Author(s)

Ermei Jie¹, Jinmei Deng²

¹Department of Endocrinology, The First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.
²Outpatient Clinic of Internal Medicine Department, The First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.

Objective: Falls are one of the most common direct causes of fractures which are major causes of morbidity and mortality in osteoporosis patient. There are many factors related to falls, by interfering of fall prevention education on the patients with osteoporosis, our study is to investigate whether fall prevention education can reduce the falling rate on the osteoporosis patients treated with zoledronic acid. Methods: A total of 178 eligible female patients who first visited our osteoporosis department during January 2016 to June 2017 were invited to participate in this study, and all participants were randomly divided into an observation group (92 cases) and an intervention group (86 cases). All patients were administrated zoledronic acid once and received a questionnaire survey about factors related to falls at the beginning and a year later. The patients in the observation group only received regular orders of adopting a healthy lifestyle while those in the intervention group received fall prevention assessment and education, and a telephone follow-up and reinforced fall prevention education a month after discharge. A year later, relevant data regarding the falls of each patient of both groups during the year and the data of the questionnaire survey were collected for intergroup comparison. Results: The difference of the improvement of fall risk factors between the two groups is statistically significant (P < 0.05), except the factor of diabetes without treatment. In the intervention group, 5.8% fell at least once, and 19.6% of the patients in the observation group reported the same during the year. Comparing the cases of falls of the two groups, the difference shows statistical significance (P = 0.006). Conclusion: For an osteoporosis patient treated with zoledronic acid, fall prevention education is an effective method to reduce the risk of falling, which would result in a lower risk of fractures and a better prognosis.

Fall, Prevention, Education, Osteoporosis, Zoledronic Acid

Jie, E. and Deng, J. (2019) Fall Prevention Education Reduces the Falling Rate on the Osteoporosis Patients Treated with Zoledronic Acid. Case Reports in Clinical Medicine, 8, 222-230. doi: 10.4236/crcm.2019.88027.