Influence of medications on fall risk assessment in maintenance hemodialysis patients: A cross-sectional study

Multiple factors influence the fall risk in end-stage kidney disease. This study aims to investigate how medication factors influence the interpretation of fall risk due to age, gender, and years of dialysis treatment among patients undergoing hemodialysis (HD).

A cross-sectional study was carried out in 2023 using the Johns Hopkins Fall Risk Assessment tool. Participants were recruited from the HD unit at a tertiary care academic medical center in Ajman, UAE. Data were analyzed between different ages, genders, and years on HD categories with or without medication factors.

Data were collected and analyzed for 44 patients. The fall risk of the study population assessed with the Kruskal-Wallis test showed no difference between different age groups (P = 0.43) but did show a significant difference when the score of medication factor was removed from the fall risk estimation (P = 0.002). A pairwise analysis showed fall risk score of the age group 46-60 years was differing from the age cohort >60 (P < 0.001). A positive moderate correlation (Spearman's correlation coefficient 0.514 was found, with a P < 0.001) was seen with an increase in age and fall risk only when the medication factor was removed from the fall risk estimation. Results on gender or duration of dialysis were insignificant.

Medication factors being a significant contributor to fall risk among the study population was found to mask the fall risk difference between age groups 46-60 years and >60 years. Such influence was not found for gender or duration of dialysis.