Effect of Home Exercise on Reducing Falls

The Effect of Lifestyle-integrated Functional Exercise Plus a Home Safety Visit on Reducing Falls in Community Older Fallers: a Randomized Controlled Trial

This proposed randomized controlled trial aims to study the long-term compliance of the LiFE program and its combined effects with a home safety visit on fall prevention in community-dwelling older fallers.

This will be a single-blinded randomized controlled trial. The subjects will be randomly assigned to the LiFE exercise plus home safety assessment group, or the control group by a computer program operated by an independent researcher. This study conforms to the ethical principles of the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.

Inclusion Criteria:

• aged 60 or older
• able to ambulate with a Functional Ambulation Category (FAC) score ≥ 3
• able to walk for ≥ 10 meters
• history of falls in the past 12 months
• living in the community
• without MCI or dementia according to the 5-minute Montreal Cognitive assessment
• have a moderate fall risk or above as assessed by the Physiological Profile Assessment
• able to understand Chinese.

Exclusion Criteria:

• blindness
• diagnosis of mental disorders (e.g., severe depression, schizophrenia)
• any contraindications to exercise (e.g. unstable angina).