The Prevalence of Chronic Diseases and Quality of Life in Elderly People in Samsun

The increasing aged population has recently become a focus of interest in developing countries. The aims of our study were to evaluate chronic diseases and measure the quality of life of elderly people in Samsun. A cross-sectional study was conducted between March 1 and April 30,2001. There were 8350 elderly people in the study area. The study group consisted of 835 elderly people, calculated by using the sample size formula. Except for 98 (11.7%) individuals, 737 of 835 elderly people participated in this study. In the first step of the study, the data of 737 elderly people were used, and then in the second step the data of 150 elderly people with a chronic disease were compared with the data of 150 elderly people, matched according to age, without any chronic disease. All data were analyzed by using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) for continuous and post-hoc Bonferroni test. Ninety-six males (26.6%) and 54 females (14.4%) stated they did not have a chronic disease. In the study group, the scores of the SF-36 life quality scale subgroup decreased with age in most of the categories except “pain and general” (P < 0.05). Participants with a chronic disease possessed significantly lower scores in all subgroups of the scale than the participants without a chronic disease (P < 0.001). While aging is an unpreventable physiological state, determining and solving the problems of elderly people might improve their quality of life.