In a systematic review looking at patients over age 65 who sustained a cervical spine injury from a low-level fall, there was a 3.8% prevalence of injury identified. The paper could not correlate injury with GCS level or altered level of consciousness due to the quality of the data available.
Bottom line again is patients over age 65 with low-level falls should be considered to have significant injury until proven otherwise.
References
Cervical spine injuries in adults ≥ 65 years after low-level falls - A systematic review and meta-analysis.
Jessica McCallum, Debra Eagles, Yongdong Ouyang, Jamie Vander Ende, Christian Vaillancourt, Christophe Fehlmann, Risa Shorr, Monica Taljaard, Ian Stiell
