While winter weather conditions could increase the number of seniors you're treating on travel therapy jobs, it may also have something to do with hypertension medications. Research from professionals at Yale University and Oregon State University, which was recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, indicated that prescriptions for hypertension in the elderly may be related to an increased risk of injury due to falling.
Research findings
Authors of this study knew from past findings that serious injuries, such as head traumas and hip fractures, resulting from a fall had similar effects on function and mortality as cardiovascular events. However, they were interested in finding out more about possible a link between antihypertensive medications and the risk of falling in seniors. All 4,961 participants were older than 70, suffered from hypertension and resided in community-living environments.
While 14.1 percent of the included seniors were not taking antihypertensive medications, 31.3 percent fell into the high-intensity antihypertensive group and 54.6 percent were designated to the moderate-intensity group at the start of the study. At the three-year follow-up, 446 of the participants had experienced a serious fall, which lead to injuries such as fractures, joint dislocations or trauma to the brain. Another 837 of the individuals died during this time span.
When the investigators compared rates of serious injury due to a fall between those who took antihypertensives and those who did not, they found that patients on the medications were more likely to suffer serious fall injuries. This was even more common in the participants who had already experienced injuries due to a fall. As a result, the authors of the study concluded that potential harms of antihypertensive medications should be taken into consideration before being prescribed, especially for seniors who have multiple chronic conditions.
"Although cause and effect cannot be established in this observational study and we cannot exclude confounding, antihypertensive medications seemed to be associated with an increased risk of serious fall injury compared with no antihypertensive use in this nationally representative cohort of older adults, particularly among patients with a previous fall injury," authors of the study explained, according to Nurse.com.
Dr. Sarah D. Berry pointed out to the source that clinicians should individualize treatment of hypertension depending on functional status with this data in mind. On travel PT jobs, patients may be more likely to seek out lifestyle changes through physical therapy sessions as more doctors take this research into consideration.