[What is the real incidence of falls in hospitals?]

To determine the incidence of falls at acute hospital level and to compare this incidence with that found in the observational study with the notified falls.

We used a prospective observational study to register patient falls, with daily follow-up in the medical-surgical hospital units, and reviewed the notification of falls records. The patient monitoring was conducted between December 2008 and March 2009 at Fuenlabrada University Hospital. The accumulated incidence of falls was calculated, the association between qualitative variables, and the validity of the notification of falls record with regards to the reference pattern, the observational study.

A follow-up has been completed 1,001 patients, finding an accumulated incidence of 1.6% of the followed-up patients, compared to a notified incidence of 0.9%. No statistically significant differences were found (P=.167. The notification of falls record had a Kappa index of 0.24, with a sensitivity of 18.75% and a specificity of 99.39%, compared to the reference, the observational study.

The incidence of falls practically doubles when using data from observational studies as opposed to those from notification systems.