Evaluation of the Criteria for Quality of Life of Elderly Health Care Centers in Tehran Province, Iran

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES The objective of this study was to evaluate the elderly quality of life of people covered by the healthcare centers in Tehran and its influencing demographic and background factors. METHOD This is a cross-sectional study of quality of life of the elderly population covered by healthcare centers and bases in Tehran, as well as the influential background and demographic factors. Sampling was performed using simple random stratified sampling proportionate to the size of strata. Data were collected using the Iranian version of the standard questionnaire Short Form Health Survey (SF-36). RESULTS According to the findings, 240 (60%) of the cases were men and 160 (40%) were women. Regarding age distribution, 76.3% fell in the 60-69 age range and 87.2% were illiterate. 18% of the elderly stated that they have financial problems and 19.5% did not express any financial problems. While studying the relationship between financial status and health status with the mean scores of quality of life, statistically significant differences were observed in all domains (p=0.032<0.001). The mean quality of life was lower in women compared to men. CONCLUSIONS The findings of the present study indicate that the health-related quality of life in the elderly population is influenced by their health status and demographic and background variables.