Seabridge Bathing's Blog » falls

Elderly woman dies after falling into scalding hot bath

admin — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:17:25 +0000

By Alan O’Keeffe, Wednesday August 31 2011

An elderly woman unable to get out of a very hot bath died from severe burns.

Evelyn Attwell (78) was trapped in the scalding bath at her home in Dublin as her daughter desperately tried to break down the locked bathroom door.

“I’m stuck. The water’s too hot,” she called to her daughter Vivienne Thompson, who tried to rescue her.

Mrs Attwell, who had seven daughters, died a week later at the National Burns Unit at St James’s Hospital in Dublin.

A post-mortem found she died of multi-organ failure due to “thermal burns as a result of partial immersion in hot bath water” at her home in Brookwood Rise, Artane.

Dublin City Coroner Dr Brian Farrell delivered a verdict of accidental death. Extending his sympathy to her family following the “very tragic occurrence”, Dr Farrell said it appeared she must have slipped into the bath.

In a statement to the coroner’s court, Ms Thompson said her mother appeared to be suffering from early-onset dementia and was scheduled to undergo a medical scan for the condition the day after the accident happened.

Ms Thompson visited her mother on the afternoon of October 25 last year and brought her dinner. Mrs Attwell was preparing for the hospital visit and went upstairs for a bath. After 10 or 15 minutes, Ms Thompson heard her mother calling her. She went upstairs and heard her mother calling through the locked door.

Ms Thompson said she tried to force the door open but it was a new door and she couldn’t get it open. She sent her daughter for help and called the fire brigade.

Her mother was “still talking” to her for a few minutes before falling unconscious. When the fire brigade arrived and broke in the door, she was found lying widthways in the bath with her legs out. The paramedics revived her and she became “fully alert”. She spoke with her daughter on the ambulance trip to Beaumont Hospital.

Mrs Attwell was transferred two hours later to St James’s Hospital burns unit, where she died on November 2.

Family members told the coroner in court that Mrs Attwell used to complain of feeling “a little bit dizzy” from time to time. The family were concerned that she had been declining cognitively over the previous eight months.

The family did not know how the bath water became too hot. The coroner said she must not have put any cold water into the bath and she may have slipped into the bath while preparing it.

hnews@herald.ie

Diuretics May Boost Fall Risk in Nursing Home Residents

admin — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 19:36:03 +0000

From Medscape News

Nursing home residents who are started on a diuretic, and those who are already on a diuretic and are switched to a higher dose, have an acute surge in their fall risk.

This is according to data released here at the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) 2011 Annual Scientific Meeting.

The study results showed that the risk for falls in nursing home residents was elevated more than 2-fold within 1 day of them receiving a new prescription for a diuretic or an increase in their diuretic dosage.

The increased risk was especially pronounced with loop diuretics.

“We recommend increased surveillance for all residents for the first 2 days following a change in diuretic in order to reduce falls,” Sarah D. Berry, MD, MPH, instructor in medicine at the Institute for Aging Research, Hebrew SeniorLife, and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, told Medscape Medical News.

For continent residents, scheduled toileting may also be helpful because it may prevent urinary urgency secondary to a full bladder, she advised.

Full article is at http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/742843

What injury causes the most Emergency Room visits?

admin — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 23:11:51 +0000

Falls.

By children.

By the elderly.

For seniors, falls are associated with:

lower-body weakness
problems with balance and walking
visual impairment
chronic illness or a
history of stroke.

Falls are the leading cause of unintentional home injury deaths, accounting for 33 percent of deaths.

According to the Home Safety Council (HSC) they account for more than 40 percent of nonfatal injuries. The two highest risk age groups are children under five and older adults over 70 years old.

Falls Are the Leading Injury-Related Cause of ER Visits

When seniors fall: outside the house is different than inside

admin — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 20:16:35 +0000

According to a study by the Institute for Aging Research, older adults who fell outdoors were somewhat younger than those who fell indoors, more likely to be male and better educated, and had lifestyle characteristics indicative of better health.

Those who fell indoors had more physical disabilities, took more medications, and had lower cognitive function than those who fell outdoors.

Read an excerpt of the report here.

Fear of falling can lead to more falls

admin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 22:48:11 +0000

The fear of falling can ironically lead to more falls among the elderly, according to new research.

Gait disturbances, or difficulty walking as a result of old age, often have many causes, according to the researchers from the Neurological Hospital and Health Center of the Ludwig Maximilians University in Germany.

These can include visual defects, neurodegeneration of the motor cortex, taking medication or drinking alcohol, and anxiety over falls.

Those elderly individuals who are afraid of falling typically restrict their own movements, inadvertently worsening the physical conditions they may have, and contributing to a greater risk of falls.

The prevalence of anxiety-related gait disturbances in elderly patients could be as high as 85%, according to the report.

Read the full report here: http://www.aerzteblatt.de/v4/archiv/pdf.asp?id=74599

Falls among elderly linked to sedatives, anti-depressants

admin — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:55:29 +0000

Falls among elderly people are significantly associated with several classes of drugs, according to a study by the University of British Columbia.

The study, published Nov. 23 in the Archives of Internal Medicine, provides the latest quantitative evidence of the impact of certain classes of medication on falling among seniors. Falling and fall-related complications such as hip fractures are the fifth leading cause of death in the developed world, the study noted.

Read the article “Falls Among Elderly And Sedatives, Mood-Altering Drugs Linked: UBC Study“.

The No. 1 Injury in Hospitals

admin — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:50:27 +0000

You would think hospitals are safe places. And they generally are.

Yet injuries do happen *in* hospitals. And the # 1 injury is falling down, as this chilling excerpt from WBUR in Boston relates:

It had been a typical Friday afternoon in the summer. “All of a sudden, out of nowhere, we heard a humongous thud,” recalled Nurse Ellen Beckwith, who had been working on that floor.“So we all went running and this little lady had gotten up — and we’re not sure if she had stood and turned, or just stood and fell — but fell backwards,” Beckwith said. “We have closets that have a metal sill, and she had hit the back of her head on that sill.”

The patient who had fallen was 90 years old. At first, she seemed fine. She had a lump on the back of her head. But she was awake and talking, and her only complaint was a sore back. An hour and a half later, that all changed.

“All of a sudden she went unresponsive and vomited, and she was never responsive after that,” Beckwith said. “She died not long into the early morning hours.”

Read the full story at http://www.wbur.org/2009/08/25/falling-down.

Do Popes need a walk in tub?

admin — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:16:44 +0000

As you may have heard, Pope Benedict slipped and fell in his bathtub last week. He broke his wrist and will have a cast for a month.

Some of you may recall that Pope John II also fell in the bathroom in 1994, fracturing his thighbone.

Perhaps the Vatican should consider buying a walk-in bathtub to provide a safer bathing environment…

47,000 Older Adults Treated in Emergency Departments Annually for Fall Injuries Related to Walkers and Canes

admin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:03:26 +0000

Fractures most common injury; one in three injuries required hospitalization

From 2001 to 2006, an average of 129 Americans ages 65 and older were treated in emergency departments each day—a total of more than 47,000 each year—for injuries from falls that involved walkers and canes, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study published this month in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

The study, which examined six years of emergency department medical records, found that, for older adults that had falls related to walkers- or canes, most of the injuries involved walkers (87 percent). People were seven times more likely to be injured in a fall with a walker as with a cane. Older women sustained more than three out of four walker-related injuries (78 percent) and two out of three cane-related injuries (66 percent).