- Meeting abstract
- Open access
- Published:
Falls occurrence is related to loss of vibration perception and functional reach in diabetes: a retrospective study
Diabetology & Metabolic Syndrome volume 7, Article number: A43 (2015)
Background
Falls incidence has a higher prevalence in diabetic patients, but there are few information about the contribution of the specific complications of polyneuropathy. The identification of those factors can increase efficacy of preventive and therapeutic actions to avoid the tragic consequences of falls episodes.
Aims
Identify the occurrence of falls in the last 12 months in patients with Diabetes Mellitus (DM) and describe its association with diabetic polyneuropathy (DPN) signs and symptoms and with a functional task.
Materials and methods
A cross-sectional, retrospective data analysis of 409 community dwelling diabetic patients was performed to describe, compare and verify possible associations between the variables. We followed the recommendations of international guidelines [1] and defined two main groups: non-fallers (NF, no episode of falls in the past 12 months) and at risk of falling (RF, at least 1 fall in the past 12 months). Patients voluntarily participated in a campaign for prevention and detection of diabetes, during one day of activity. The clinical assessment was composed by (a) questionnaire of Michigan Neuropathy Screening Instrument, (b) tactile and vibration perception [2,3], (c) functional reach test and (d) self-reported falls occurrence questionnaire in the past 12 months. Descriptive statistics, T tests and Chi-Square tests were used to identify differences between groups (α=5%).
Results
There were higher occurrences of falls in elderly DM patients than in older adults (Figure 1). There were no differences of DPN-related symptoms, time of DM onset and the number of tactile insensate foot regions between groups. However, the fallers presented decreased vibration perception and lower functional reach test score compared to non-fallers.
Description (mean and standard deviations) and comparisons between groups.
Conclusion
DM individuals with decreased vibration perception and decreased functional reach test are exposed to higher risk of falls. Those clinical variables can be used to implement falls prevention programs for this population.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
About this article
Cite this article
Dalfolo, M.E., de Camargo Neves Sacco, I., Taddei, U.T. et al. Falls occurrence is related to loss of vibration perception and functional reach in diabetes: a retrospective study. Diabetol Metab Syndr 7 (Suppl 1), A43 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1186/1758-5996-7-S1-A43
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1758-5996-7-S1-A43