Perceived vision-related quality of life and risk of falling among community living elderly people.

Falls and fall injuries among the elderly population are common, since ageing is a risk factor of falling. Today, this is a major problem because the ageing population is increasing. There are predictive factors of falling and visual impairment is one of them. Usually, only visual acuity is considered when measuring visual impairment, and nothing regarding a person's functional visual ability is taken into account. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess the perceived vision-related quality of life among the community living elderly using the 25-item National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire (NEI VFQ-25) and to investigate whether there was any association among vision-related quality of life and falls. There were 212 randomly selected elderly people participating in the study. Our study indicated that the participants had an impaired perceived vision-related health status. General health was the only NEI VFQ-25 variable significantly associated with falls in both men and women. However, among men, near and distance activities, vision-specific social functioning, role difficulties and dependency, color and peripheral vision were related to falls.