Vision-specific Assessment On Independent Living Ability And Its Risk Factors Of The Elderly In Shenyang City

Objective: Maintaining/improving independent living ability of the elderly could increase the quality of their lives and lessen the burden placed on both family and society caused by population aging.Thus,it could become one of effective strategies coping with population aging.Vision is one of important approach to collect information.Impairment of visual ability and eye disorder were able to affect the daily life of the elderly.Thus,it is necessary to clarify vision-specific status of independent living ability and its risk factors for the purpose to provide health care for the elderly properly.This study was designed to perform interview among people aged 65 years and over in Shenyang City and clarify the level of independent living ability and its risk factors.We believed that our findings was able to provide reference for coping with aging and improving the quality of life of the elderly.Methods: A cross-sectional study employing random cluster sampling method was performed among 2469 individuals who were ?65 years,had lived in sampled community for more than 5 years,were not suffer from dementia,and had the willing to take part in this study.Interview was conducted with the questionnaire pertaining to cognitive function,independent living ability,visual ability,demographic characteristics,health status,behavioral factors and social-psychological factors.2078 effective responses were received and the effective response rate was 84.2%.After cognitive function screen by mini-mental state examination,1938 participants without cognitive defect became our subject and their data were analyzed.Results:The prevalence of independent living ability among the elderly with good visual ability was 55.46%,whereas the level was 44.78% among the elderly with impaired visual ability.The results of interaction analysis revealed that vision had interaction with health status(chronic diseases)and social-psychological factors(loneliness,family relationship,worrying about falling,and leisure activities).Thus,data analysis was performed seperately among the elderly with good visual ability and the elderly with impaired visual ability.Logistic regression analysis showed that independent living ability had significant association with,in the sequence of OR value,chronic disease,taking a walk,watching TV,loneliness,sleeping quality,family relationship and hearing ability for the elderly with good visual ability,and with watching TV,leisure activities,chronic disease,worrying about falling,sleeping quality,taking a walk,marital status and smoking for the elderly with impaired visual ability.Conclusion: The independent living ability of the elderly aged 65 years or over in Shenyang City was in a low level.This ability and its risks factors differed between the elderly with different visual ability.For the elderly with good visual ability,health status was the most important factor affecting their independent living ability.Behavioral factors and social-psychological factors were also its main risk factors.By contrast,social-psychological factors were the prominent risk factor for the independent living ability of the elderly with impaired visual ability.Their independence was also associated with health status,behavioral factors and demographic characteristics.