Objetive:

To determine the prevalence of multiple falls and your associated factors in functional elderlies non-institutionalized from Villahermosa, Centro, Tabasco, Mexico.

Materials and methods:

We achieved a cross-sectional study in the 17 Consejos de Adultos Mayores from Villahermosa City, Centro, Tabasco, México, in 2008. We studied a universe of N = 526 elderlies and we took a simple randomized sample with 95% of confidence of n = 110, which were pourpositively selected. We included elderlies of 60 years-old or more, of any gender, without cognitive deterioration known which agree participate in the study. We registered sociosanitary variables along with the falls during the last six months before the research, that we obtained by mean of direct anamnesis. The data were analyzed by mean of descriptive statistics and odds ratio (OR) with confidence intervals to 95% (CI95%) that we obtained with Epi Info© 3.3.2 for Windows©.

Results:

110 elderlies with mean age 71.5 ± 4.8 years-old in an interval of 60-86 years, 58% were males and 42% females. The 100% they had at least one fall, 82% were first time during the six months before the study and 18% were multiple falls. We found associations statistically significant among multiple falls and non-united married status OR = 0.21 (IC95% 0.08, 0.54), and first time fall OR = 0.08 (IC95% 0.01, 0.59).

Conclusions:

The prevalence of general and first-time falls were major than reported in the international literature, and of multiple falls within what was expected accord to the references. The protector association between multiple falls and no-married civil status and first- time falls suggest the existence of fear of falling. To study the extrinsic and intrinsic characteristics of the falls are required.

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