Falls as outcome in clinical trials
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Clinical Trials, Geriatrics, Orthopedics
- Keywords
- falls, clinical trial, automated fall detection
- Copyright
- © 2014 Goldhahn et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2014. Falls as outcome in clinical trials. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e293v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.293v1
Abstract
Falls have significant impact on affected individuals. They may lead to injuries including fractures, hospitalization, decrase in mobility, and loss of independence. Therefore, falls constitute a relevant outcome parameter in clinical trials. However, especially elderly and frail patients may forget to report or neglect falls. The use of fall-detection technology in clinical trials may overcome this challenges. However, commercially-available fall-detection technologies are designed as personal emergency response systems rather than as measurement tools to assess the effects of an intervention. Hence, before adopting a commercially-availablefall-detection technology in a clinical trial one has to assess its suitability for such application.
Author Comment
This PrePrint is part of the Human Motion Project Collection.