Factors associated to Functional Capacity of elderly people from the community

Abstract

A frequent occurrence in demencial processes is the decline of functional capacity of individuals. Thus, it is important to know how variables influence it, searching for aids on the implementation of way to prolong individual’s autonomy and retard the progression of dementia. The objective of the study was to investigate the influence of socio-demographic and health variables on instrumental activities of daily living (IADL’s) performance. The sample included 394 elderly people from community drawn from the project “Dementia Prevalence in Elderly Population of Juiz de Fora”. An interview assessing socio-demographic and health variables was carried out and functional capacity was assessed by the Lawton Scale. Descriptive analysis were performed and Bivariate Correlations. In this sample, age ranged from 60 to 98 years (71.01 + 8.05) and 69.5% (274/394) were females. The average of schooling was 6 years and 10 months (S.D=4.52). The mean score on the Lawton Scale was 22.32 (S.D=2.97). The performance on IADL’s showed significant correlations with age, schooling, number of disease and number of medicines used, besides state of health perception. Few studies have been designed with the aim of identify factors that interfere with IADL’s. Therefore, it is necessary to obtain more data on representative samples from the community.