Prevalência e fatores associados à fadiga em idosos não institucionalizados
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2013-09-19
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Universidade Federal de Goiás
Resumo
Fatigue is a common complaint among elders and little is known about its prevalence and associated factors. Besides its significant impact on health conditions and functional incapacity that persist throughout the years, it results in negative impact on the development of activities of daily living, mood changes and increased risk of disability, impaired quality of life and mortality of elderly people. OBJECTIVE: To assess the prevalence and factors associated to fatigue in non-institutionalized elders. METHODOLOGY: This is a population-based cross-sectional study, conducted during the year of 2010. The sample consisted of 635 elders with age of 60 years or older, living in the urban area of Goiânia, Goiás (Brazil). Exclusion criteria were: obtaining a score lower than 20 in the Mini-Mental State Exame (MMSE) and any other reason that impeded the participants to answer the interview by themselves. The dependent variable was fatigue, characterized by two empirical factors: the verbalization of both "fatigue" and "reduced ability to perform usual activities." The independent variables were gender, age, education, marital status, paid work, household income, self-reported need of help in the tasks of everyday life, if the elder had someone to help, body mass index, self-rated health, regular exercise, pain, referred comorbidity, fall during last year, history of alcohol consumption and smoking history, activities of daily living and instrumental activities of daily living. The chi-square test or Fisher test, when necessary, were used to estimate the association between the independent variables and fatigue. Poisson regression with robust variance was performed for multivariate analysis. RESULTS: The prevalence of fatigue was 22.5%, and significantly associated with female sex (p = 0.007), higher education (p = 0.046), self-reported need of help (p = 0.003), self-perceived poor health (p = 0.000), absence of regular exercise (p = 0.001), pain complaints in the past 30 days (p = 0.000), higher number of comorbidities (p = 0.001), and dependence in instrumental activities of daily living (p = 0.000). In multivariate analysis, the variables considered independently associated with fatigue were pain in the last 30 days (PR = 1.46, 95% CI: 1.03 - 2.08, p <0.035) and self-rated poor health (PR = 1.82, 95% CI: 1.29 to 2.57, p <0.001). CONCLUSION: The present study is the first nationwide and estimated fatigue as prevalent in one-fifth of non-institutionalized elderly. Fatigue was independently associated with pain and self-rated poor health which indicates that elders with these two characteristics should receive special attention since they are at greater risk for fatigue. Health professional need training on how to comprehensively evaluate the elderly in order to identify factors associated with fatigue so they can act mainly against those modifiable factors.
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LIMA JÚNIOR, Antônio José de. Prevalência e fatores associados à fadiga em idosos não institucionalizados. 2013. 106 f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Enfermagem) - Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiânia, 2013.