Why Falling Is So Dangerous For The Elderly
BY SHANNON PALUS
MARCH 09, 2023
Falls—they don’t seem like a big deal, but they are. “As our population continues to live longer and longer, falls are becoming the great plague of the modern era,” wrote Jeremy Faust in Slate in 2016, after Leonard Cohen fell—and then died. “They are the leading cause of accidental death in the elderly, and the incidence has increased steadily over the past decade.” A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fact sheet warns that the country is on track to experience seven deaths by falling every hour.
Gordon Lightfoot postpones tour after fracturing wrist in fall, undergoing surgery
TORONTO - Gordon Lightfoot is recovering after a fall at his home last week caused him to fracture his wrist.
The “If You Could Read My Mind” singer-songwriter has been forced to postpone a number of upcoming tour dates after undergoing emergency surgery at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto.
Victoria Lord, a representative for Lightfoot, said Monday it's expected he will take eight weeks to recover.
Winnipeg winter shouldn’t translate to lower quality of life
BY BRENT BELLAMY
April 11, 2023
FALLING is the leading cause of injury-related hospitalizations in Winnipeg, and more than one-third of the province’s direct health-care costs are accounted for by injuries related to falls.
The financial costs, however, are far less impactful than the personal effect on health and well-being that falls can have, particularly for older adults. A fall can often trigger a downward health spiral for seniors, where injuries limit mobility and independence, and a fear of falling again leads to anxiety, depression and social withdrawal.
According to the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, 20 percent of falls that require hospitalization are the result of slipping...In Winnipeg, a typical winter month can see more than 300 people, more than 10 per day, visit urgent care or an emergency room to treat injuries from a fall.
50 Billion Dollars spent annually on healthcare related to slips & falls
October 29, 2021
On April 22, 2011, not long before she planned to marry, Amber Morris walked into a Costco in St. Louis where a puddle was waiting. In the store, Morris slipped and hit her right knee so hard on the floor that she dislocated her kneecap. Her fiancé helped her up and took a photo of the slick of rotisserie chicken grease coating the floor where she’d fallen. Two weeks later, Morris went in for emergency surgery and never came out. A blood clot in her heart killed her at age 39. Her burial took place on what was to have been her wedding day.
Morris’s parents filed a wrongful death suit against Costco Wholesale Corp. and hired a St. Louis law firm that called itself the “winningest” on billboard ads. That firm recruited an expert witness named Russell Kendzior, a former flooring salesman from Texas who over the past quarter century has been retained in more than 1,000 lawsuits and styles himself as America’s most prominent floor safety advocate. Kendzior was prepared to argue not only that the chicken grease was evidence of negligence but also that the store’s flooring was inherently dangerous. In 2015, Costco, which declined to comment for this story, settled for an undisclosed sum, according to Kendzior.
The millions paid out annually in settlements are compounded by the $50 billion that Americans spend on health care annually to treat slips, trips, and falls. In a typical year, bad spills kill thousands and seriously injure hundreds of thousands, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than a quarter of the 888,220 injuries resulting in days away from work in 2019 were caused by slips, trips, and falls, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s common to refer to these cases broadly as accidents, but Kendzior says that’s a misnomer. “Accidents are not predictable and not preventable,” he says. “Most slips and falls are not accidents. They’re incidents.”
Bloomberg Newsweek
by Peter Smith