Total Quality Assurance

homes). It seems unlikely, however, that persons in these settings would be able to obtain alcohol as readily as persons living in the community. We did exclude persons with severe cognitive impairment. For those older persons remaining in the study, we adjusted our results for cognitive impairment. Finally, Dr. Carlson is correct in stating that we did not assess the risk of alcohol use specifically for the subset of older persons who had recurrent falls. It is possible that a number of the older persons who had a fall injury event in our study had had recurrent falls. As part of the Study to Assess Falls among the Elderly, we collected additional data which will be used for future analyses on persons with recurrent falls. Despite studies that do not demonstrate an association between alcohol and falls overall, we feel that there is sufficient reason, due to the association of alcohol with other diseases, to discourage alcohol use among older persons.