ORANGE PARK, Fla. – One Orange Park doctor says the number of cases of people falling and being treated at hospitals is significantly increasing. Most of the falls are happening at people’s homes.
“People are getting older, people are living longer, too,” said Dr. Steven Goodfriend, who is an emergency medicine physician at HCA Florida Orange Park Hospital. “When you have that, there are just higher risks of falls.”
Falling is one of the leading causes of death or serious injury for adults 65 years and older, according to the CDC.
“Recently, my mom fell,” Goodfriend said. “She’s 85 and on a blood thinner. She fell, and she had to go to the hospital and get checked out. She is fine.”
Goodfriend mentioned blood thinners. He says that one detail can present a significant risk if a person falls and gets hurt, no matter their age.
“If you’re on a blood thinner, your blood is thinner,” he said. “So if you are going to bleed, it is going to be harder to stop that bleeding. You are probably going to bleed a lot more. So when they get a cut, whether it is from a razor or whatnot, it is just a lot harder to stop bleeding.
Goodfriend, who is an emergency medicine physician at HCA Florida Orange Park Hospital, says falls are going to happen.
But he pointed out that there are things people can do right now to help lower the chance or even prevent them.
Goodfriend suggests people should exercise, including strength, weight, and balance training.
Avoid long periods of just sitting to prevent losing leg strength.
People should wear shoes with good traction and cushion.
“My mom wears flip-flops,” Goodfriend said. “We talked to her about that many times, and she threw away her flip-flops after this incident. We see a lot of injuries from falls in a bathroom. There are a lot of hard things in there. There’s a hard shower, bathtub, the porcelain toilet, and there’s a porcelain sink, and it’s usually tiled floors. Most of the things that I see in the emergency room are people who say, ‘It just happened so fast.’”
Goodfriend encourages people, especially older patients, to always go to an emergency room to be evaluated if they fall because it is considered a high-risk injury.