Prediction of Mortality in Community‐Living Frail Elderly People with Long‐Term Care Needs

Abstract

A multidimensional prognostic index was developed and validated using age, sex, functional status, and comorbidities that effectively stratifies frail, community-living elderly people into groups at varying risk of mortality.

“Knowing is Better”: Preferences of Diverse Older Adults for Discussing Prognosis

“…Prognosis is an important factor in individualizing care for older adults living with late life disability, 1 and physical disability is a major predictor of limited prognosis. [2][3][4][5][6][7] As a result, medical treatment guidelines are increasingly based on prognostic information rather than on arbitrary agebased cutoffs.…”

Subjective Social Status and Functional Decline in Older Adults

“…However, longitudinal studies have not been conducted to examine whether older persons who view themselves at the lowest rungs of social status are at most risk for poor health outcomes. Since decline in functional status is one of the greatest predictors of poor quality of life, morbidity, health care utilization and mortality 20,21 among older adults, the goals of this study were (1) to assess the association between subjective social status, and baseline functional and health status in older adults, and (2) to determine whether older adults with lower subjective social status are more likely to experience fouryear functional decline or death.…”

How Safe is Your Neighborhood? Perceived Neighborhood Safety and Functional Decline in Older Adults

“…16,17 Such physical inactivity can lead to deconditioning and functional decline in older adults; both of which are strong predictors of high health care costs, high health care utilization, poor quality of life, and mortality. 18,19 Yet, to our knowledge, there are no studies that have assessed the relationship between perceptions of neighborhood safety and long-term decline in Activities of Daily Living (bathing, eating, dressing, toileting, transferring), the most commonly used measure of functional ability in older adults. Moreover, previous studies were small, geographically limited, did not include a representative sample of the U.S. older adults population, and/or had short follow up.…”