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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Effects of preventive home visits to elderly people living in the community
— systematic review | | Author(s) | Jolanda C M van Haastregt, Jos P M Diederiks, Erik van Rossum |
| Journal title | British Medical Journal, no 7237, 18 March 2000 |
| Pages | pp 754-758 |
| Keywords | Home visits [doctors] ; Preventative medicine ; Literature reviews. |
| Annotation | The authors aimed to summarise the effects of preventive home visits on physical function, psychosocial function, falls, admissions to institutions, and mortality in older people living in the community, and to assess the methodological quality of the trials included. They identified 15 randomised controlled trials by searching Medline, Embase, and the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register. Considerable differences in the methodological quality of the trails were found, but in general the quality was considered adequate. Favourable effects of the home visits were observed in 5 out of 12 trials measuring psychosocial function, 2 out of 6 measuring falls, 2 out of 7 measuring admissions to institutions, and 3 of 13 measuring mortality. None of the trials reported negative effects. No clear evidence was found in favour of the effectiveness of preventable home visits to older people living in the community. It seems essential that the effectiveness of such visits is improved, but if this cannot be achieved, their discontinuation should be considered. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-000508211 A |
| Classmark | L5H: LK2: 64A * |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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