Content area
Full text
Environ Health Prev Med (2009) 14:111117 DOI 10.1007/s12199-008-0066-5
REGULAR ARTICLE
Evaluation of performance status of daily living activities and of the future risk of falls in the non-handicapped, community-dwelling elderly
Taro Okamura Naohito Tanabe Kunihiko Shinoda Nao Seki Isamu Konishi Akiko Takeshita Hiroshi Suzuki
Received: 24 June 2008 / Accepted: 3 December 2008 / Published online: 20 January 2009 The Japanese Society for Hygiene 2009
AbstractObjectives There is a growing need to evaluate the performance status of the activities of daily living (ADL) of the elderly in the rapidly aging Japanese society. The purpose of this study was to verify the usefulness of our new scoring sheet for assessing present ADL status and to clarify whether or not the assessed ADL status can predict the future risk of adverse conditions related to falls. Methods The validation study was performed using 116 non-handicapped community-dwelling Japanese elderly at least 60 years of age. Of those subjects, 44 were also
analyzed for the relationship between baseline ADL status and subsequent risk of adverse conditions related to falls. Results The daily living performance score sheet had good internal consistency, with a Cronbachs alpha of 0.82 and a sequential hierarchical structure that reected the difculty of the activities. The total score was signicantly and positively associated with six of eight subscale scores on the Short-Form 36-Item Health Survey (P \ 0.01). In the follow-up study, every one-point decrease in total score was signicantly associated with a 39% elevated risk of a stumble or fall (P = 0.022) and also borderline signicantly associated with higher risks of a fall, anxiety while walking indoors, and anxiety while walking outdoors (P \ 0.10).
Conclusion Our new scoring sheet can reliably and comprehensively assess present ADL status. The assessed ADL could predict the future risk of adverse conditions related to falls.
Keywords Aging population Assessment
Daily living activities Fall risk Performance score
Introduction
The Japanese population is rapidly aging. The proportion of the general population in 2005 which was classied as elderlyat least 65 years of agewas 20.2% in 2005 and will be 23.1% in 2010 and 33.7% in 2035 [1]. Given this situation, extending healthy life expectancy and preserving quality of life (QOL) of the elderly are major concerns of Japanese public health...