Capacidade e desempenho para a realização das atividades básicas de vida diária: um estudo com idosos dependentes

Abstract

One of the consequences of the demographic and epidemiological transitions is the survival ofthe elderly dependent people on one or more people that supply their necessities. Although inold age individuals require greater attention and care from their families, the idea of caring forthe elderly together with doing something for them, rather than helping with their disabilitiesprevents them from performing their self-care with autonomy and as independently aspossible. This cross sectional and observational study, with the use of convenience sampling,aimed to compare the capacity and performance of dependent elderly people to perform thebasic activities of daily living (ADLs), considering environmental factors that have an impacton their independence within the family. The Functional Independence Measure (FIM) wasapplied, from January to March 2010, to 109 elderly people treated at an Elderly ReferenceCentre located in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. Of these, 60 seniors met the establisheddependence criteria and were described according to the International Classification ofFunctioning Disability and Health (ICF), through the ICF Checklist. The data were studied bya descriptive, inferential and paired analysis using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, Student Ttest, Pearson correlation coefficient, and the Kruskal-Wallis and Wilcoxon test. The averageage was 80.45 ± 6.871, with a predominance of the female sex (74.31%). 55.05% of theelderly were considered dependent according to the ADLs. It has been found an average of2.9 ± 1.3 of medical diagnoses and a 4.5 ± 2.3 of drugs per elderly. The difference betweencapacity and performance was statistically significant (p <0.05) in most tasks and activities ofdaily life. The description of environmental factors showed a wide discrepancy between thefamily support and attitudes. While 96,6% were supported by relatives, attitudes wereunfavourable in 55% of the households. The study demonstrated that dependence is notsignificantly influenced by the number of medical diagnoses (p = 0.669), age (p = 0.323) ornumber of medications used (p = 0.464). The family difficulties in reorganizing to take careof a dependent elderly did not prevent them to provide the necessary support to the dependentfamily member, even when this meant the overworking of a single family member (55%). Theattitudes of family members did not help the elderly functional development.