Abstract
BackgroundHealth, as defined by the WHO, is a multidimensional concept that includes different aspects. Interest in the health conditions of the oldest-old has increased as a consequence of the phenomenon of population aging. This study investigates whether (1) it is possible to identify health profiles among the oldest-old, taking into account physical, emotional and psychological information about health, and (2) there are demographic and socioeconomic differences among the health profiles.MethodsLatent Class Analysis with covariates was applied to the Mugello Study data to identify health profiles among the 504 nonagenarians residing in the Mugello district (Tuscany, Italy) and to evaluate the association between socioeconomic characteristics and the health profiles resulting from the analysis.ResultsThis study highlights four groups labeled according to the posterior probability of determining a certain health characteristic: “healthy”, “physically healthy with cognitive impairment”, “unhealthy”, and “severely unhealthy”. Some demographic and socioeconomic characteristics were found to be associated with the final groups: older nonagenarians are more likely to be in worse health conditions; men are in general healthier than women; more educated individuals are less likely to be in extremely poor health conditions, while the lowest-educated are more likely to be cognitively impaired; and office or intellectual workers are less likely to be in poor health conditions than are farmers.ConclusionsConsidering multiple dimensions of health to determine health profiles among the oldest-old could help to better evaluate their care needs according to their health status.
Highlights
Health, as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO), is a multidimensional concept that includes different aspects
Our aim is to determine whether it is possible to classify oldest-old people according to their multidimensional health status, defined by physical, cognitive and psychological health, to help in choosing the best care needed by this growing segment of the population
The Physical Component Summary (PCS) and Mental Component Summary (MCS) were divided into three categories: those who scored higher than the average were considered to be in good health, those who scored lower than the average were considered to be in poor health, and nontestable individuals were considered to be in the worst health
Summary
As defined by the WHO, is a multidimensional concept that includes different aspects. As a consequence of the increasing number of oldest-old people in Western societies and their health characteristics and needs, it is only in recent years that studies focusing on the oldest-old have been conducted, aiming to understand the potential drivers of good health conditions at extremely old ages [6,7,8,9,10]. These studies have always focused on a specific dimension of health, such as cognition, physical and functional status or morbidities. This approach allows people to be distinguished into groups by taking only their individual characteristics into account [11, 13]
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