Acta Scientiarum. Health Sciences (May 2019)

The quality of life and the sociocultural, economic and health characteristics of the elderly living in the amazon region

  • Tábada Samantha Marques Rosa,
  • Euler Esteves Ribeiro,
  • Kennya Márcia dos Santos Mota,
  • Vanusa do Nascimento,
  • Ednea Aguiar Maia-Ribeiro,
  • Ivana Beatrice Mânica da Cruz

DOI
https://doi.org/10.4025/actascihealthsci.v41i1.37836
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 41, no. 1
pp. e37836 – e37836

Abstract

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WHOQOL-Bref is widely used to assess quality of life. The present study estimated the prevalence of elderly people with low quality of life and the association of socio-cultural, economic and health variables. The elderly were classified as low ( 60 points). The elderly (1431) were investigated, most of the elderly were married, with low schooling, with own income and lived with their spouse or other relatives. A large part (20.8%) reported having performed some habitual physical activity, (24.7%) smoked and (7.1%) ingested high amounts of alcohol. The mean WHOQOL-Bref score was 87.9 ± 11.6 points, with 6.1% having poor quality of life and 93.9% regular/good. There was a high number of elderly people with hypertension, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and stroke in the low quality of life group. Also, it showed a high frequency in the elderly who reported very poor/poor vision, hearing and the prevalence of hospitalizations. The results suggested that the quality of life standards assessed by the WHOQOL-Bref are similar to the Southern Brazilian regions and the cut-off point used here was reliable for detecting poor quality of life associated with chronic morbidities.

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