Health demands correlated to the quality of life in the elderly in the family health strategy

Health of the Elderly; quality of life; Health Services Needs and Demand: A Cross-sectional Study

Objective - To identify the health demands correlated to the quality of life (QoL) of the elderly enrolled in the Family Health Strategy. Methods - A cross sectional and exploratory study conducted in the municipalities of Natal and Santa Cruz, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte. A total of 120 elderly people enrolled in the Family Health Strategy (ESF) of the above mentioned municipalities, aged 60 and over, under intellectual and psychological conditions of understanding and responding to the protocol, and who agreed to participate in the study, according to the Term Of Informed Consent (TCLE). To identify cognitive impairment, the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) was adopted. The following instruments were used: sociodemographic characterization, Mini Nutritional Assessment, Body Mass Index (BMI), Barthel Scale, Lawton Scale, Prism 7, Geriatric Depression Scale and Medical Outcomes Short-Form (SF- 36). We performed normality analysis (Kolmogorov-Smirnof test) and used non-parametric tests (Chi-square, Mann Whitney, Spearman correlation). Results - There was a predominance of the female gender, younger elderly, low schooling and retirees. Health demands were identified: functional in 97.5% of the sample, nutritional in 70.0% and depressive symptoms in 40.0%. As regards the differences in quality of life scores with the presence of health demands, the social domain with functional demand (p = 0.017), emotional domain (p = 0.002), functional (p = 0.013) , Physical (p = 0.005), general health (p <0.001), body pain (p = 0.019) and SFtotal (p = 0.005) with depressive symptoms. Conclusion - In the present research, the main health demands that correlated with QOL were functional and depressive symptoms, thus demonstrating the importance of these variables in aging.