Clinical Decision Path for Identifying Recurrent Falls in Late Middle-Aged and Older Patients With Chronic Schizophrenia

Background Falls are a major hazard for elderly patients with schizophrenia. As patients with schizophrenia may experience a more-accelerated rate of physical aging than the overall elderly population, the risk of falls may emerge during the late middle-age period in this population. Furthermore, the risk of falls is affected by multiple, interrelated risk factors. Purpose This study was undertaken to capture the complexity of the risk of falls in patients with schizophrenia. A cross-sectional approach was used to apply classification and regression tree (CART) analysis to generate a clinical decision path to identify the risk factors of recurrent falls in late middle-aged and older patients with schizophrenia. Methods Two hundred ninety-one patients aged 55 years or older were recruited from psychiatric halfway houses for assessment. Frailty, physical functional performance, depressive severity, cognitive function, and level of fatigue were measured, respectively, using the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures Frailty Index, Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB), Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale, Short Portable Mental Status Questionnaire (SPMSQ), and Chinese version of the Fatigue Severity Scale. The variables revealed by descriptive statistics to be statistically significant were further analyzed using CART analysis. Results The overall proportion of recurrent fallers in this study was 19.2%. CART analysis revealed eight end groups and identified four predictors: frailty, physical functional performance, cognitive function, and sex. The most prominent condition for recurrent fallers was frailty, present in 57.1% of the frail participants. In the nonfrail group (both prefrail and robust), participants with an SPPB score of less than 10 had a 29.7% chance of being a recurrent faller versus 13.6% for those with an SPPB score of 10 or more. Furthermore, an SPMSQ score of 7 was the next-best split among participants without frailty, with an SPPB score of 10 or more. Finally, among participants without frailty and with an SPPB score of 10 or more and an SPMSQ score of more than 7, the proportion of recurrent fallers was higher in women than men. Conclusions The results of this study indicate that assessing frailty status may be an effective, first-step approach to identifying schizophrenic patients at an increased risk of recurrent falls. Among patients with prefrailty or robust status, an SPPB score cutoff of 10, an SPMSQ score cutoff of 7, and being female may be used sequentially to identify individuals at a heightened risk of recurrent falls.