ABSTRACT

Introduction: Age-related co-morbidities are common among persons living with chronic Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). However, data are largely absent on the relationship between frailty and incontinence as related to falls—common age-related co-morbidities—among people living with chronic HIV (PLWH). Methods: To inform hospital-based Occupational Therapy (OT) services for PLWH, we performed a case-control study using extracted data from the electronic medical records of PLWH who had received OT at a large academic hospital. Two-hundred-and-four subjects were included in the final dataset; sixty-eight were cases that reported a fall within the last 12 months, while 136 were controls which were PLWH who had not sustained a fall. Results: The association between falls and frailty indicated that persons categorized as ‘pre-frail’ with balance deficits were more likely to fall (OR=2.77 [1.18-6.52]). Women who lacked insurance were less likely to fall (OR=0.38 [0.18-0.82]) and (OR=0.29 [0.09-0.88]) respectively. The association between incontinence and falls among PLWH were not statistically significant in a multivariate adjusted regression model (OR=1.38 [.59-3.22]). Conclusion: Our findings suggest further examination of the person factors of PLWH who are categorized clinically as ‘pre-frail’ or ‘frail’ may improve health outcomes and reduce falls when paired with occupation-based interventions.