[Risk of a fall in a critical hospital. The cognoscible state and the dependence level]

Falls by the elderly are an important cause of fatalities, they tend to increase hospital stays and they increase health care payments and family expenses. Consequently falls have an adverse effect which requires their prevention by identifying risk factors and establishing preventive measures. Given the importance of this type of accident, the authors attempt to discover if there is a relationship between a fall and the cognoscible state of those patients -to carry out this evaluation, the "Lobo" test is applied- and the fall and the degree of independence a patient has by means of the Barthel test. The results obtained show that, compared to the control group, patients included in the "GDR" sector (Diagnostically Related Groups) of the central nervous system and the GDR of the locomotive apparatus suffered more falls and therefore, in consequence, the factors which predict a fall have more relationship with a patient's basic disease than with the number of clinical processes which affect a patient. As opposed to our initial idea risk of fall factors, we found no association to lower values on the Lobo nor Barthel scales; which is to say that functional dependencies or cognoscible deterioration do not lead to more falls.