his systematic review provides evidence that fall prevention exercise programmes for older people not only reduce the rates of falls but also prevent injuries resulting from falls in older community dwelling people. The protective effect seems most pronounced for the most severe fall related injuries: the estimated reduction is 37% for all injurious falls, 43% for severe injurious falls, and 61% for falls resulting in fractures.
Many of the risk factors for falls and fall induced injuries are similar.35 These factors are correctable by well designed exercise programmes, even in the very old and frail.26 36 37 All exercise programmes that have proved to be effective for fall prevention (and all trials included in this review) emphasise balance training, and there is now ample evidence that this type of programme improves balance ability.13 38 However, most programmes are multicomponent—that is, also include other types of exercise such as gait and functional training, strengthening exercises, flexibility, and endurance. There is evidence that these types of interventions can improve reaction time, gait, muscle strength, coordination, and overall physical functioning as well as cognitive functions, especially executive function.19 28 39 It is therefore thought that exercise prevents injurious falls not only by improving balance and decreasing the risk of falling, but also by improving cognitive functioning,41 and the speed and effectiveness of protective reflexes (such as quickly extending an arm or grabbing nearby objects) or the energy absorbing capacity of soft tissues (such as muscles), thereby diminishing the force of impact on the body.40 41 Hence, for any given initial energy of a fall, improved protective responses should decrease the severity of the resulting trauma, which may explain why the estimated protective effect of exercise is stronger for severe injurious falls than for all injurious falls, the latter including severe but also minor and moderate injuries.
Although exercise reduces the severity of injury, the pooled effect of exercise on reducing all injurious falls (37%) was larger than the effect of exercise on falls resulting in medical care (30%) (which are presumably more severe). However, medical care seeking behaviour is influenced by the type and availability of care and sociodemographic characteristics as well as by other personal factors such as personality, pain tolerance, and anxiety.42 43 Accordingly, the mere fact that medical care was sought does not necessarily imply that an injury was more severe, although this is probably less true when different categories of injurious falls are examined within the same population. Of the 10 studies included in the analysis of all injurious falls, five also contributed to the analysis of falls resulting in medical care,13 21 25 26 28 and three also contributed to the analysis of severe injurious falls.13 25 26 Within these studies, the point estimate of the effect of exercise decreased from all injurious falls to falls resulting in medical care for all studies but one, and from falls resulting in medical care to severe injurious falls for all studies. These results support the argument that exercise reduces the severity of the injuries caused by falls.
Other risk factors are specific to the risk of trauma during a fall, and correction of these factors by exercise may also help explain the larger protective effect of exercise on serious injuries such as fractures. In particular, low bone mass is a major determinant of the risk of fracture once a fall begins. In three of the five trials included in the analysis of fall related fractures,29 33 34 the intervention was specifically designed to improve bone mass and hence included high intensity impact exercise in addition to balance, gait, and functional exercises. It resulted in a significant positive effect on bone mass at bone sites that varied with the study. However, these interventions were tested in women who were on average less than 75 years of age and did not have specific risk factors for falling. Hence, they may not be appropriate for older people aged more than 75 years, who are at the highest risk of falls and fractures, especially hip fractures.
The large estimated pooled effect of more moderate intensity exercise training on serious injuries found in this meta-analysis suggests that reducing the risk of falling and improving protective responses during a fall are important and feasible means of preventing fractures and other serious injuries in elderly people, as others have emphasised.44 45 46 47 48 This finding is especially important because large epidemiological studies have shown that most fractures in the population occur in people at moderate “bone risk” for their age.49 50 Hence, while prescription of antiosteoporotic drug treatments is currently recommended for older people with low bone mass, who are at the highest risk of fracture, additional effective strategies t