Functionality for daily living activities in rural elderly from Cardenas, Tabasco, Mexico

Abstract

Objective.  To  assess functionality for daily living  activities in  rural  elderly  from  "General  Vicente  Guerrero"  village (C-29)  o f Cardenas,  Tabasco,  Mexico,  in  2011. Material and methods. Cross-sectional design.  Universe: 194  elderly  people.  Sample: simple  randomized, n = 113.5=114.  Sampling:  systematized  random , k =1 .7 =2. Selection criteria:  age > 60 years old,  any gender, without physical disabilities, who agreed to take part in the research. Variables:  age,  gender,  schooling,  marital  status, occupation,  hobbies and  leisure time,  morbidity, first-level control  of chronic-degenerative diseases,  hospitalizations, functionality  for  daily  living  basic  activities  (DLBA), functionality  for daily  living  instrumental  activities  (DLIA), functionality  for  daily  living  advanced  activities  (DLAA). Instruments:  Katz  scale,  Lawton  &  Brody  index,  Siu  and Reuben  physical  scale.  Analysis:  descriptive  statistics  and odds  ratio  (OR)  w ith  95%  o f  confidence  (p  =  0.05).  Soft­ware: Epi  Info®  3.5.1  fo r W indows©  environment. Results.  114  elderly  people,  mean  age  7 0 .2 ± 7 .3  years, interval  6 0 -96  years-old.  54%  was  male  and  46% female. 77% was carriers o f diseases.  Functional  dependence:  15% basic,  6 6 %  instrum ental  and  6 8 %  advanced.  Associated factors  to  basic functional  dependence:  age  >  national  life expectancy O R =4.3  (CI95  1.45,  12.73),  social  role change OR =6.32  (CI95  1.67,  23.91).  Associated  factors  to  instru­mental  functional  dependence:  fem ale  gender  OR =4.73 (CI95  1.97,  11.35). Associated factor to advanced functional dependence: fem ale gender O R =7.58  (CI95  2.83,  20.34). Conclusions: The prevalence o f dependence fo r DLBA was low,  while  for  DLIA  and  DLAA  was  high.  Rehabilitation actions  and  targeted  timely  detection  programs  are required.