Objectives The ability of older adults to live independently is often assessed with a battery of questions known as Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADLs). Many of these questions query the difficulty conducting household activities that have been predominantly conducted by women (e.g., the ability to prepare a meal), especially for cohorts now in old age. Although previous research ha...

BACKGROUND So far, it has not yet been studied whether socioeconomic status is associated with distinct frailty components and for which frailty component this association is the strongest. We aimed to examine the association between socioeconomic status and frailty and frailty components. In addition we assessed the mediating effect of the number of morbidities on the association between socio...

BACKGROUND Mental disorders, especially depression, are one of the principal causes of disablement. Previous research has been limited partly due to the failure to take into account sub-syndromal states and the very large number of candidate mediating and confounding factors. METHODS Longitudinal associations between baseline depressive symptomatology and activity limitations were examined in...

BACKGROUND The adoption of a frailty paradigm in primary care would be helpful to identify adults who need priority access to specialised resources. The frailty phenotype by Fried et al is a popular operationalisation of frailty, but it is not easily applicable in routine primary care practice. We recently created and validated a frailty instrument based on the Survey of Health, Ageing and Reti...

BACKGROUND As for all individuals, the Internet is important in the everyday life of older adults. Research on older adults' use of the Internet has merely focused on users versus nonusers and consequences of Internet use and nonuse. Older adults are a heterogeneous group, which may implicate that their use of the Internet is diverse as well. Older adults can use the Internet for different acti...

There are few data on the disability caused by asthma in elderly subjects. The aim of this survey was to assess the functional status of a population aged 65 years or more, being treated for asthma-related symptoms. A representative sample of 3,777 elderly people, living at home in the South-West of France, was surveyed using a standardized questionnaire on factors of ageing and their consequen...

The objective of this study was to describe the clinical features of older persons identified as high risk by a predictive modeling algorithm and to determine their suitability for clinical interventions like case management or disease management. A cross-sectional survey was undertaken at a community-based general internal medicine practice with 826 older patients enrolled in a Medicare-like h...

BACKGROUND To determine if risk stratification followed by rapid geriatric screening in an emergency department (ED) reduced functional decline, ED reattendance and hospitalisation. METHOD This was a quasi-randomised controlled trial. Patients were randomised by the last digit of their national registration identity card (NRIC). Odd number controls received standard ED care; even number patie...

BACKGROUND The impact of postoperative delirium on post-discharge functional status of older patients remains unclear, and little is known regarding the interrelationship between cognitive impairment and post-operative delirium. Therefore, the main purpose was to evaluate the post-discharge functional status of patients who experience delirium after undergoing orthopaedic surgery and the interr...