Carmona DY, Moreno PLE, Méndez FL, Escalona RCR, Ortega PJA

Language: Spanish
References: 0
Page: 1032-1044
PDF size: 85.31 Kb.

ABSTRACT

Introduction: diabetes mellitus is one of the most frequent chronic diseases in elder people. A great increase of this disease has been noted during the last years due to the growth of population´s survival. There is not correspondence between the health care given to diabetic elder people in the health care institutions and the high repercussion the disease has on their functionality, a fact attempting against their life quality.
Objective: to determine the relationship existing between diabetes and disability in elder people, and also between functionality and disease evolution time, associated diseases and disorders in the psycho-affective sphere.
Material and methods: a cross-sectional, observational, descriptive study was carried out on 141 diabetic patients, older than 60 years old, belonging to the health area Ceiba Mocha, who fulfilled the inclusion criteria, in the period from October 2013 to December 2014.
Results: more than half of the patients evidenced functionality disorders. Obesity and hypertension were the predominating associated diseases in diabetic patients with functional disorders. It was evidenced a higher number of patients with functional disorders among those with 10-15 years of disease´s evolution. A high percent of the patients with functional disorders showed depression and mild cognitive impairment.
Conclusions: among the studied patients, the most affected age group was the 70- 79-years-old group, followed by the 60-69-years-old one. The female sex predominated. More than half of the studied patients had functional disorders, predominating in those patients with a higher time of disease´s evolution.