Nationally, falls remain the leading cause of both fatal and non-fatal injuries in older adults and are the leading cause of traumatic brain injury. In 2021, falls led to the deaths of 36,500 older adults in the United States and 3,805 older Floridians. While some studies have hypothesized that alcohol use contributed to these outcomes, there are few studies which have examined this issue.
As such, little is known about the association between the frequency of alcohol use and the severity of injuries sustained after a fall in older adults. A study by Florida Atlantic University's Schmidt College of Medicine and collaborators, is one of the first to examine the relationship between self-reported alcohol use and severe head trauma in this group. For the study, researchers used data from the Geriatric Head Trauma Short Term Outcomes Project (GREAT STOP), which included a prospective cohort of consecutive patients presenting to the emergency departments (ED) of two level one, university-affiliated trauma centers in Palm Beach County, with annual volumes of 50,000 and 69,000.
Patients aged 65 and older who sustained blunt head trauma following a fall were included in the study. Trained research assistants screened all older ED patients to enroll those with head trauma. Data collected included age, race, sex, smoking, alcohol use, drug use, antiplatelet use, anticoagulant use, mechanism of injury, past medical history, and loss of consciousness.
All patients were asked about alcoho.