Hemispheric white matter lesions in the elderly prone to falling.

Brain computed tomography studies of two groups of elderly (mean age 83.3 years, SE 1.7) with no neurologic diagnoses were compared. Sixteen of the subjects were non-fallers and the remaining 17 had frequent unexplained falls. The group of fallers had a significantly greater degree of white-matter hypodensity of the elderly (Student's t-test = 2.7, p less than 0.01).