Cardiorespiratory Endurance and Balance of Elderly Dementia Patients in Nursing Home

Abstract

Elderly age_is a period of life characterized by physical changes or decline in bodily functions. This results in the increase in incidence of diseases among the elderly, one of which is dementia. One of the causes of dementia is the lack of physical exercise, that leads to decreased physical fitness components such as cardiorespiratory endurance and balance. The purpose of this study is to determine the description of cardiorespiratory endurance and balance of elderly dementia patients in Nursing Home Ciparay Bandung Indonesia. The research design used is descriptive quantitative with purposive sampling technique to 33 elderly dementia patients. The subjects were tested with 6-minute walk test to measure the cardiorespiratory endurance, and one-leg closed-eye test to measure balance. The results show that as many as 63.60% of elderly dementia patients had poor cardiorespiratory endurance and as many as 57.60% had a poor balance. It can be concluded that most elderly dementia patients have poor cardiorespiratory endurance and balance as a result of several factors such as gender, age, body mass index and level of physical activity. This study suggest that elderly dementia patients do exercises that can improve cardiorespiratory endurance and balance such as gymnastics elderly, especially for elderly dementia patients in the Intensive Care Room in Nursing Home Ciparay Bandung Indonesia.