Quality of Life among Malnourished Elderly Population in Rural Puducherry, South India

Abstract

Context: Health of the elderly will be an important issue in defining the health status of a population in coming years. There is a paucity of information with regard to quality of life (QOL) among malnourished elderly. Aims: To assess the QOL among malnourished elderly in a rural field practice areas of tertiary care hospital, Puducherry, and to find the sociodemographic factors associated with QOL among malnourished elderly population. Settings and Design: A community-based cross-sectional study in the rural field areas of Government Medical College of Puducherry. Subjects and Methods: After obtaining ethical approval, the study was conducted among 225 malnourished elderly (>60 years) from April to June 2019 using multistage random sampling technique. Sociodemographic data were obtained using a semistructured questionnaire. Malnutrition was screened using Mini Nutritional Assessment Short Form and QOL was assessed using World Health Organization QOL-BREF questionnaire. Results: The mean and standard deviation of the study participants' age was 69.89 + 6.3 years. 57.8% of them were female, 81.3% were unemployed, and 73.3% were dependent on their old age pension for their livelihood. QOL of malnourished elderly was poor in all the domains when compared to those without malnourished and this is found to be statistically significant. In binomial logistic regression analysis, the presence of comorbidity (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]: 2.4 and 95% confidence interval: 1.3–4.4), unemployed (AOR: 4.8; 1.4–15.9), and living without family (AOR: 0.2; 0.06–0.7) revealed the statistically significant association with low QOL score among malnourished elderly. Conclusions: The mean score of QOL among malnourished elderly was below average in all four domains in which psychosocial domain was badly affected.