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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Patterns of self-rated health in older adults before and after sentinel health events | | Author(s) | Paula Diehr, Jeff Williamson, Donald L Patrick |
| Journal title | Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, vol 49, no 1, January 2001 |
| Pages | pp 36-44 |
| Keywords | Health [elderly] ; Life expectancy tables ; Quality of life ; Ill health ; Longitudinal surveys ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | 5,888 participants from four US communities in the Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS) had their health plotted over time, to ascertain how patterns of change in health differed before and after the onset of the following important health events: death, stroke, congestive heart failure (CHF), myocardial infarction (MI), hip fracture, cardiac procedure, hospital admission for cancer, and hip fracture. For those who died, health status declined slowly until about 9 months before death, when it dropped steeply. Comparing those equally far from death, health was unrelated to age, but men and whites were healthier than women and blacks. Health for other events declined before the event, and dropped steeply at the event, showed some recovery, and then declined further after the event. About 65% to 80% of subjects were healthy 2 years before their event, but only 35% to 65% were healthy 2 years afterwards. Patterns were similar, although less extreme, for the "no event" group. Visualising trajectories of health helps us to understand how serious health events change health. However, because of possible biases, work is needed to explain, predict and possibly prevent such changes in health. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-020115204 A |
| Classmark | CC: S7: F:59: CH: 3J: 7T |
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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