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Falls from ≥10 feet are considered potentially high risk for injury, whereas ground-level falls generally are not, but are outcomes from ground-level falls in elders different? Researchers analyzed data from the National Trauma Data Bank from 2001 to 2005 to compare outcomes between 32,320 elders (age, ≥70) and 14,988 younger patients (age range, 18–69) following ground-level falls.
Elders were significantly more likely to sustain long-bone fractures (53.4% vs. 33.4%), pelvic fractures (7.2% vs. 1.9%), and intracranial injury (10.6% vs. 8.4%) after ground-level falls than younger patients and had significantly higher in-hospital mortality rates than younger patients (4.3% vs. 1.2%). In multivariate analysis, the two strongest predictors of i…