Falls-Related Traumatic Brain Injury In Young-Old People
Tuesday, 04 May 2010 00:00
Nick Rushworth’s presentation to the International Federation on Ageing 10th Global Conference, Melbourne May 4. Falls-Related Traumatic Brain Injury In Young-Old People: Under-Recognised, Under-Diagnosed, Highly Fatal And Highly Preventable
Due to population ageing, falls are now not only the leading cause of all injury hospitalisations throughout the developed world, but also the leading cause of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Even though fall-related injuries to the head are consistently the second most common after hip fracture, head trauma in older people is often overlooked in acute care and appropriate neurological assessment and monitoring forgotten. And though rates of falls-related injuries to the head are rising while those for hip fracture are falling, brain injury fails to feature in falls prevention programs.
This presentation outlined research findings from Brain Injury Australia’s policy paper on falls-related TBI recently completed for the Australian Government. It will highlight the plight of the young-old - those aged between 60 and 80 - who are at the highest risk of TBI due to their active lifestyles. At the same time, this age group falls into a service gap – being both too old for rehabilitation aimed at return to work and too young for geriatric medical management. Many in this age group are also at increasing risk of a "secondary" TBI after a fall - from bleeding in the brain – due to their use of anti-coagulant (blood thinning) medication to prevent stroke.
Brain Injury Australia, alongside organisations such as the US Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, is campaigning for greater attention to be paid to the prevention and rehabilitation of TBI in older people. Specifically BIA argues that, as governments increase the retirement age in line with both enhanced life expectancy and pension costs, strict age-based criteria that limit access to brain injury-specific rehabilitation to those aged 65 years or under in Australia should be radically revised.
Download the full presentation. [PowerPoint Slide Show - 6.39 MB]



