Predictive accuracy of performance oriented mobility assessment for falls in older adults: A systematic review

Performance Oriented Mobility Assessment (POMA) is a commonly used screening tool for identifying patients at risk of falling. The purpose of this systematic review was to determine the overall predictive accuracy of POMA for falls in community-dwelling older adults. This review could provide useful information to use POMA in both research and clinical settings.

In this study, PubMed, EMBASE, CINHAL, Cochrane Library, EBSCO, and SCOPUS were searched to identify studies published from 1987 to 2017 that aimed at validating POMA and reporting predictive value with sufficient data to calculate sensitivity and specificity. The methodological quality of the selected studies was assessed using the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy studies (QUADAS-2).

Of the 121 identified studies, 12 met the inclusion criteria and were entered in the final analysis. Fall rate ranged from 5% to 61% in the included studies. The POMA cutoff point for discriminating fallers from non-fallers varied from 15 to 26. Sensitivity and specificity of the POMA ranged from 24-91 to 37-97, respectively.

Due to heterogeneity of the type of studies, participants, the definition of fall, and use of different versions of POMA, it was not possible to determine a specific cutoff point for POMA. In addition, using the same version and scoring method of POMA and controlling the significant potential confounders (eg, age, gender, and comorbidities) would provide better information about the predictive accuracy of POMA for falls in older adults.