The biggest risk for Canadians: taking a trip

SHERYL UBELACKER

A raised bit of concrete on a sidewalk. An icy patch on the road. A misstep on the stairs at home. All of these can lead to accidental falls — landing a person not only on the ground, but often also in hospital.

Unintentional falls are the most common form of injury across the country: every day last year, falls resulted in almost 1,800 reported emergency department visits and 417 hospital admissions, says a new report by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).

In 2016-17, nearly 654,000 — or about one-third — of the more than two million injury-related emergency department visits were due to accidental falls, CIHI reported Thursday. Injuries from falls led to about 152,500 hospital admissions, up f rom more than 146,600 the previous year.

The average length of a hospital stay after a fall was 14.3 days, compared to 7.5 days for other medical reasons, the data showed.

Falls are the scourge of growing older, said Geoff Fernie, a senior researcher at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute (TRI) who is independent of CIHI.

“But it’s not exclusively older people,” he said. “We see a lot of young children falling down stairs and having serious head injuries.

“We see middle-aged people running up and down stairs and having indoor stair accidents quite commonly. And we see a lot of workers having falls — and not just construction-type workers.”

In fact, almost 8,800 of fall-related injuries across Canada occurred as a result of people slipping on ice, CIHI data showed.

Falls within the home accounted for more than 114,000 emergency department visits last year, making it the most common place that people take a tumble.

“You keep seeing the incidence of falls going up and you see the injuries continuing to increase,” said Fernie, who has been researching falls and ways to prevent them for 30 to 40 years.

CIHI found hip fractures were the most common injury sustained in falls.

The second most common injuries were lower leg fractures — including 16,135 broken ankles — and head injuries (13,997).