Cross-sectional Study On Activities Of Daily Living And Healthy Life Expectancy Of Elderly In Zhengzhou City

ObjectiveUnder the background of an ageing population, the old people’s health issue has aroused people’s concern. Basing on the study, we could understand the present situation of Activities of daily life (ADL) and Healthy life expectancy (HLE) of elderly in Zhengzhou city and explore the influence factors of older people’s ADL and HLE, which provided reference for improving the old body function, reducing the disabled and improving the elderly life and life quality; Also the study could provide advice for improving the elderly health and enhancing the service quality according to the old people health status and existing problems.MethodsBy cross-sectional survey method and convenience sampling, we involved internationally recognized ADL scale and self-designed questionnaire to investigate people aged65or older from seven communities and eleven nursing homes in Zhengzhou city. The investigation included:social demographic data (date of birth, gender, educational level, marital status, physical activity, the situation of participating insurance, endowment will, whether staying with their children, economic source) and chronic illnesses (listening or vision problems, disease of heart or head blood-vessel, waist and leg pain, diabetes, bronchitis and Alzheimer’s disease). Then we applied Logistic regression analysis to explore the influence of the ADL factors. Basing on the demographic data of every age group in2009of Zhengzhou city (population of every age, the number of death; all men and women population by age group, the number of death), we used Sullivan method to draw health life expectancy table of elderly aged65or above for analysis.Results1. The basic information:We investigated2622people with an average age of74.36±7.12years old; There were1216male, accounting for46.38%, while the number of female was1406, accounting for53.62%; The number of people who had spouse was1790, accounting for68.27%, while the number of people without spouse was832, accounting for31.73%; There were2154literate people, accounting for82.15%, while the rest were illiteracies about468people, accounting for17.85%; The number of peple who paticipated in sports regularly or occasionally was1881, accounting for71.74%, with the rest741people who never participated in sports, accounting for28.26%; The number of people with endowment will was1867(71.21%), and the number of people who had choosed the organization for aged was755, accounting for28.79%. Among the2622respondents, the number of patients with Alzheimer’s disease was179with a proportion of6.83%; the number of people with two diseases or above was1189, accounting for41.53%; the number of people with chronic disease was2465, in which the prevalence was94.01%.2. ADL and HLE situation of elderly:ADL dependency ratio of Zhengzhou city was35.51%(931/2622) which trended to be higher with the age growth. In80-84years old group, ADL dependency ratio between men and women existed statistical significance (χ2=12.867, P=0.000), and the dependency ratios of nine items of women were higher than men (P values were all less than0.05). The number of diseases and ADL existed correlation(χ2=169.643, P<0.05). ADL dependency ratio and different economic sources had statistical difference (χ2=274.151, P=0.000). In physical self-maintenance skill, the highest dependency ratio was bathing (46.38%) which was followed by walking (24.10%) and going to toilet (18.23%).In65～69years old group, the life expectancy (LE) of elderly was19.38years.In general, women’s LE was higher than that of men’s; The HLE of elderly in65～69years old group was11.31years, and there were no statistical significance of HLE between men and women; The ratio of HLE and LE of men was higher than that of women (t=2.757, P=0.040).3. Influencing factors:The risk factors of ADL in elderly were Alzheimer’s disease (OR=9.518,95%CI:5.233～17.314), listening or vision problems (OR=2.061,95%CI:1.571～2.704), diabetes(OR=1.937,95%CI:1.435-2.615), disease of heart or head blood-vessel (OR=1.769,95%CI1.426～2.194), age (OR=1.106,95%CI:1.087～1.126). The protective factors were physical exercise frequently (OR=0.147,95%CI:0.109-0.197), having spouse (OR=0.312,95%CI:0.247～0.393), physical exercise occasionally (OR=0.434,95%CI:0.340～0.554), educated (OR=0.681,95%CI:0.513～0.905).ConclusionThe situation of ADL of elderly in Zhengzhou city was not good. The influence of chronic diseases on ADL was serious. Prevention and control of chronic diseases should be strengthened. Old women lived longer than old men while health life expectancy had no gender gap, but life quality of men’s was higher over women’s.