This review examines the most common types of accidents affecting elderly people in order to identify common threads which may suggest scope for prevention. For all accident types discussed, the outcome for elderly individuals is worse than for younger victims. Accidents involving older people have been neglected in research for a number of years and there are insufficient data on the true prevalence of accidental injuries and the long-term costs and consequences of accidents. Although the literature on accidents appears extensive, publications on falls dominate and comparisons between these studies are complicated by the variety of ways of classifying and defining falls and by the different populations studied. The search yielded a total of 151 publications. Water transport accidents, drownings, railway accidents, and accidents caused by machinery were not excluded from the search, but no publications were found specifically on these areas. They are thus excluded from this review. The relatively low rate of deaths from these accidents may account for the dearth of publications on these topics. Death rates for these types of accidents are equally low for older individuals and for younger adults so they do not seem to have age-related causes. It is concluded that further prospective research is needed into accidents involving elderly people living in the community. It is important to identify those people most at risk of injury. Follow-up studies which examine the effectiveness of accident prevention among very elderly people are also needed.
Abstract