Falls and associated factors among elderly persons residing in the community

Abstract Objective: to identify the prevalence of falls among elderly persons and analyze fall-related factors. Method: a cross-sectional, population-based study conducted by household survey of 400 elderly subjects (aged 60 years or older) living in the city of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil was carried out. The occurrence of falls in the last 12 months, sociodemographic factors, health profile and geriatric syndromes were observed. The crude and adjusted prevalence ratios (PR) were obtained using Poisson regression. A three-model hierarchical approach was applied in the multivariate analysis. In all the multivariate models, gender and age were defined as confounding variables. Variables which reached a level of p