Dual-Stiffness Flooring: Can It Reduce Fracture Rates Associated With Falls?

Knoefel, Frank; Patrick, Louise; Taylor, Jodie H.; Goubran, Rafik

doi:10.1016/j.jamda.2012.12.077

Cited by 29 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 10 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The risk for injury during a fall depends in part on the velocity at contact (or "impact velocity") of the impacting body parts (Majumder et al, 2008;Robinovitch et al, 1991). Accordingly, impact velocity is a key input parameter for biomechanical testing of fall injury prevention technology (e.g., hip protectors (Mills, 1996;Minns et al, 2004a;Robinovitch et al, 2009), helmets (ASTM, 2007, and compliant flooring (Knoefel et al, 2013;Laing and Robinovitch, 2009;Minns et al, 2004b)). Risk for injury during a fall may also depend on the time duration of the fall, which governs the faller's ability to initiate and execute protective responses, such as arresting the fall with the upper limbs (DeGoede et al, 2001;Robinovitch et al, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kinematic analysis of video-captured falls experienced by older adults in long-term care

Choi

Wakeling

Robinovitch

2015

Journal of Biomechanics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kinematic analysis of video-captured falls experienced by older adults in long-term care

Choi

Wakeling

Robinovitch

2015

Journal of Biomechanics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Recent preliminary studies suggest that compliant flooring may reduce fall-related injuries in LTC,36 37 but these studies have used retrospective36 and non-randomised36 37 study designs, which leave open the opportunity for biased effect estimates, and they have been insufficiently powered to examine the effect of compliant flooring on the most serious and costly fall-related injuries. The FLIP Study will fill this gap in the evidence base.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A 2.5-year retrospective study at a US LTC site found there was a non-significant trend for fewer bruises and abrasions from falls on compliant flooring (2.54 cm SmartCells installed in two resident bedrooms and bathrooms) than falls on standard flooring 36. While two falls on standard flooring resulted in fracture, no falls on compliant flooring resulted in fracture 36. Further, a non-randomised study of female residents at a Swedish LTC site installed compliant flooring (1.25 cm Kradal) in 350 m 2 of a single ward, including some resident rooms and common areas but no bathrooms 37.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Study protocol for the Flooring for Injury Prevention (FLIP) Study: a randomised controlled trial in long-term care

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…

Preliminary clinical findings suggest that compliant flooring may reduce the incidence and severity of fallrelated injuries in long-term care (Knoefel et al, 2013) and acute-care settings (Drahota et al, 2013). However, there is concern that manoeuvring wheeled equipment on compliant flooring could expose care staff to potentially harmful pushing forces (Drahota et al, 2013;Wynn et al, 2011).

…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Compliant Flooring Systems and Resident Weight on Hand Forces When Pushing Floor-Based Lifts and Wheelchairs among Long-Term Care Staff

Lachance

Korall

Russell

et al. 2015

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Preliminary clinical findings suggest that compliant flooring may reduce the incidence and severity of fallrelated injuries in long-term care (Knoefel et al., 2013) and acute-care settings (Drahota et al., 2013). However, there is concern that manoeuvring wheeled equipment on compliant flooring could expose care staff to potentially harmful pushing forces (Drahota et al., 2013;Wynn et al., 2011). We measured the external resultant hand forces (initial and sustained) required for female direct care staff to push two floorbased lifts (conventional manual and motor-driven) (n=14) or a wheelchair (n=14), loaded with passengers of average (67 kg) and ninetieth percentile (90 kg) resident weights, over four flooring systems: concrete + vinyl, compliant (1" SmartCells) + vinyl, concrete + carpet, and compliant + carpet. We observed an interaction between lift type and floor system for initial (p < 0.001) and sustained (p < 0.001) forces. Independent of resident weight, mean forces were lower for the motor-driven lift than the conventional lift on all flooring conditions (by 34.8 -74.4 N for initial forces and by 14.1 -64.5 N for sustained forces). With the vinyl overlay, initial forces were higher on compliant than concrete subflooring when using the conventional lift (mean difference = 44.7 N, 47.7% increase, p < 0.001) and motor-driven lift (29.8 N, 45.8% increase, p < 0.001). Similarly, with the vinyl overlay, sustained resultant forces were higher on compliant subflooring than concrete subflooring when using the conventional lift (39.0 N, 88.2% increase, p < 0.001) and motor-driven lift (9.7 N, 29.0% increase, p < 0.001). With the carpet overlay, the differences between compliant and concrete subfloors were less pronounced than with the vinyl overlay for the conventional lift (F initial : 23.0 N higher, 14.9% increase, p < 0.001; F sustained : 15.6 N higher, 18.7% increase, p < 0.001) and absent when using the motor-driven lift (F initial : p = 0.975; F sustained : p = 0.999). We also observed an interaction between resident weight and lift type for initial (p = 0.004) and sustained forces (p < 0.001). Independent of flooring system, F initial was 18.6 N higher (13.5% increase, p < 0.001) and F sustained was 11.7 N higher (14.3% increase, p < 0.001) for the ninetieth percentile weight than the average weight for the conventional lift. In contrast, there were no differences in F initial (p = 0.200) and F sustained (p = 0.100) between the average and ninetieth percentile weight conditions for the motor-driven lift. Similar trends were observed when participants pushed the wheelchair. In summary, this study found that compliant subflooring increased the external hand forces required for female direct care staff to push floor-based lifts and wheelchairs compared to concrete subflooring, and these increases in force were greater when pushing over vinyl than carpet overlay. This study also demonstrated that a motor-driven lift substantially reduced push forces compared to a conventional manual lift. Thus, motor-driven lif...

show abstract

Dual-Stiffness Flooring: Can It Reduce Fracture Rates Associated With Falls?

Cited by 29 publications

References 10 publications

Kinematic analysis of video-captured falls experienced by older adults in long-term care

Kinematic analysis of video-captured falls experienced by older adults in long-term care

Study protocol for the Flooring for Injury Prevention (FLIP) Study: a randomised controlled trial in long-term care

Effects of Compliant Flooring Systems and Resident Weight on Hand Forces When Pushing Floor-Based Lifts and Wheelchairs among Long-Term Care Staff

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About