Falls among the elderly: distinguishing indoor and outdoor risk factors in Canada.

Recognition of the complex aetiology of falls has led some researchers to limit their studies on the identification of risk factors to subcategories of falls such as injurious falls, falls requiring treatment, recurrent falls, falls in the home, or falls related to stairs. Other investigators have collected data on all falls and then classified them according to cause,' severity of injury sustained,2 or activity engaged in at the time of the fall.3 However, the usefulness of these approaches for the purposes of research and prevention remains to be seen. We report here a simple fall classification by location (indoors or outdoors) and a comparison of the risk factors for falls in each location. The suggestion that risk factors for indoor and outdoor falls differ is intuitively appealing because of the different environmental challenges in these settings, the distinct physical attributes and coping strategies required to meet these challenges and the very different activities engaged in indoors and outdoors. There is indeed some recognition that the causes of indoor and outdoor falls may differ.'