Only duration of pain and type of insurance were correlated with the presence of a history of falling. Age, sex, type of medication being used and site of pain were not correlated with risk of falling. Others have recognized that pain is a risk factor for falling, including the New York State Department of Health. Many clinicians will agree that their patients report falls. Significant and even life threatening consequential injuries have occurred among my patients.
Injuries seem to involve random parts of the body from head to toe.
One patient has required knee surgery and developed a life threatening blood clot in her leg after surgery. Another suffered a scrape on his leg that became infected. The infection spread through his blood, resulting in life threatening shock. He needed to be hospitalized for several days, but fortunately made a good recovery from the infection. A third patient fell while crossing a busy street, and needed to be dragged out of the street to keep from getting hit by oncoming traffic.