• A Stefanie Mikolaizak, Stephen R Lord, Anne Tiedemann, Paul Simpson, Gideon A Caplan, Jason Bendall, Kirsten Howard, Lyndell Webster, Narelle Payne, Sarah Hamilton, Joanne Lo, Elisabeth Ramsay, Sandra O'Rourke, Linda Roylance, and J C Close.
• Falls Balance Injury Research Centre, Neuroscience Research Australia, Randwick, New South Wales, Australia.
• Age Ageing. 2017 Mar 1; 46 (2): 200-207.

Backgroundapproximately 25% of older people who fall and receive paramedic care are not subsequently transported to an emergency department (ED). These people are at high risk of future falls, unplanned healthcare use and poor health outcomes.Objectiveto evaluate the impact of a fall-risk assessment and tailored fall prevention interventions among older community-dwellers not transported to ED following a fall on subsequent falls and health service use.Design, Setting, ParticipantsRandomised controlled trial involving 221 non-transported older fallers from Sydney, Australia.Interventionthe intervention targeted identified risk factors and used existing services to implement physiotherapy, occupational therapy, geriatric assessment, optometry and medication management interventions as appropriate. The control group received individualised written fall prevention advice.Measurementsprimary outcome measures were rates of falls and injurious falls. Secondary outcome measures were ambulance re-attendance, ED presentation, hospitalisation and quality of life over 12 months. Analysis was by intention-to-treat and per-protocol according to self-reported adherence using negative binominal regression and multivariate analysis.ResultsITT analysis showed no significant difference between groups in subsequent falls, injurious falls and health service use. The per-protocol analyses revealed that the intervention participants who adhered to the recommended interventions had significantly lower rates of falls compared to non-adherers (IRR: 0.53 (95% CI : 0.32-0.87)).Conclusiona multidisciplinary intervention did not prevent falls in older people who received paramedic care but were not transported to ED. However the intervention was effective in those who adhered to the recommendations.Trial Registrationthe trial is registered at the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry: ACTRN 12611000503921, 13/05/2011.© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Geriatrics Society. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com

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