Functional assessment of elderly population: a community-based cross-sectional study

Abstract

Background: Aging is a common, strong, and permanent process, which is affected by biological, social, psychological, and environmental factors. Objective: To assess the level of dependency among the study participants using Katz scale for basic activities of daily living and Lawton’s scale for instrumental activities of daily living. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional, community-based study was conducted in Harekala village, Karnataka, India. Adults aged 60 years and older were included in the study as the participants. Systematic random sampling was followed to reach the calculated sample size of 221. Households were the sampling unit. Data were collected using a predesigned, pretested questionnaire to elicit information on sociodemographic profile. The basic activities were evaluated using the Katz Index, while the instrumental activities were recorded using the Lawton’s scale. Independent t-test was used to compare the mean Katz score/Lawton’s score of those with morbidity with those without morbidity. Result: Of the 221 participants, 121 were aged older than 70 years. A total of 120 were male and 101 were female subjects. About 56.1% of the participants were hypertensive, and about 20.4% revealed other cardiovascular diseases. As per Lawton’s scale, it was observed that the majority of the participants required assistance or were totally dependent in managing money (10.4%) and doing housework (14.5%). About 40.3% of them needed assistance in feeding, and about 26.7% participants were unable to do toileting activity by themselves. Statistically significant difference was observed between the mean Katz scores of those subjects with cardiovascular disease and those without cardiovascular disease. Similarly, statistically significant difference was observed between the mean Lawton scores of subjects with cardiovascular disease and those without cardiovascular disease. Conclusion: Prevention of functional decline of the elderly people needs priority and such prevention may be possible by the way of detecting the functional decline at an early stage.