An Epidemiological Study On Quality Of Life Among Rural Elderly Population

Objectives To study the present situation and the affecting factors of quality of life (QOL) among elderly people in Anhui province.Methods 5 652 elderly people in rural of Anhui province were selected by random cluster sampling method from 3 stratified random areas. Data were collected through individual interviews using standardized health-related QOL and a socio-demographic health information questionnaires.Results Of the 5 652 subjects, 82.8% were satisfaction on healthy self-evaluating, with male being 84.8% and female being 79.4%. With the increasing of age, the healthy self-evaluating was worse. The subjective life satisfaction was significant positive correlation with the integrated grade of QOL.The total prevalence rate of several chronic disease in the elderly was 66.3%, with 41.6% elderly people having more than two kinds of chronic disease at the same time. The kinds of chronic disease in individual were 1.98. The prevalence rate of chronic disease from high to low in front of the first five terms were hypertension, chronic gastrointestinal disease, osteoarthropathy, chronic bronchitis, coronary heart disease in turn. The results of Logistic regression analysis indicated that age, marriage, filial piety, economy income, sleeping, chronic disease, nutrition, economy dominance, amusement, manual labor, etc were important determinants of QOL. The QOL of elderly people with no spouse, lack of filial piety, sleeping risk, chronic sufferer, nutritional risk, having none economy dominance were worse. But the QOL of elderly people with high income, often taking part in amusement and manual labor were worse. The QOL of female were much less than male's.The results of stepwise regression analysis indicated that nutrition, chronic disease, sleepwere the first three of front predicted variables.Conclusions In order to improve the qualityof life among the aged, following aspects as popularizing health education on self-care, strengthening programs on preventing and curing chronic disease, giving play to society and family in improving the QOL of the elderly people etc, shoud be promoted.