Home a Danger Zone for Many Wheelchair Users: Study

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Monday January 21 6:33 PM ET

Home a Danger Zone for Many Wheelchair Users: Study

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Nearly one in five people who require the aid of a

wheelchair to move about their home fall and hurt themselves each year, survey

results suggest.

While indoor home modifications could help prevent such injurious falls, few of

the people surveyed had made such modifications, Dr. Berg of McGill

University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and her colleagues note.

``Home environments that facilitate independence and that make it easier to move

around should be considered a basic need for disabled persons,'' Berg and

colleagues report in the January issue of the American Journal of Public Health,

journal of the American Public Health Association (news - web sites).

The researchers surveyed 525 male and female wheelchair users over the age of 18

who were living at home.

``Overall, 37.9% of wheelchair users fell at least once (during the 12-month

study period), and 17.7% suffered a fall-related injury,'' the researchers

write.

Typically, wheelchair users are encouraged to modify their homes to make

wheelchair use easier and safer. Five structural modifications are recommended

including bathroom and kitchen adjustments, widened doorways and hallways, and

the addition of railings and easy-to-open doors.

But few of the wheelchair users had modified their homes as recommended, the

researchers found.

``Only 4% had all five accessibility features and 36.4% had none,'' they report.

``A higher percentage of the injured fallers (47.7% vs 34%) reported having none

of the modifications examined (in the study),'' the report indicates.

Although the survey data offered no way to determine the adequacy of the

reported home modifications, the findings imply that making such modifications

could reduce the rate of falls by about 44%, according to the authors.

``From a public health perspective, both safety and access would be greatly

facilitated if home modifications became a reimbursable expense under Medicare,

Medicaid and other health insurers,'' Berg and colleagues write.

``From a societal perspective, there should be greater movement toward

barrier-free universal design environments,'' the team concludes.

SOURCE: American Journal of Public Health 2002;92:48.